I don’t remember when I first saw the faux adjective “Beatlesque” being used in a rock feature. I didn’t know what it meant (I still don’t), but I had a nagging suspicion that it had something to do with a band’s melodic adventurism. Still and all, I find the exercise of defining something in terms of another thing that’s wildly vacillating—“Please, Please Me” wouldn’t even pass for a distant cousin to “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey)”—well, futile. Wikipedia’s suggestion that “Beatlesque” refers to “pop bands and musicians who were influenced by The Beatles and make music that is very similar” is about as helpful as a hole in the head. Because, after all, there are questions to be answered, among them “Is it more John or Paul?,” “Is it more moptop or Revolver?,” “Does it have sitar?,” and similar queries. If you think about it, Oasis’ not-so-subtle stabs at Beatlesqueness are a function of fashion—wire-rimmed specs, ‘70s-Lennon denims—rather than the music itself.

To adjudge a musical piece as “Beatlesque,” in my opinion, is as clear a reference as ether, an element hailed by author Joe Milutis as “the nothing that connects everything.” In any case, had my favorite lexicographer Samuel Johnson been alive today, I’m sure he’d come up with something more enlightening, or at least characteristically hilarious (such as his self-deprecating definition of a “lexicographer” being “a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words”).

Pardon my abrupt detour to scientific and lexicographic territories in the context of the Fab Four (of all things); sometimes I get carried away.

Anyway, of lesser popularity is the mangling of the boys’ last names (i.e., “Lennon-esque,” etc.), a phenomenon that has more to do with the extravagant sloth of rock journalists than the clear-cut identities of Dr. Winston O’ Boogie, Macca, and Harrison (for some reason, it never occurred to critics to associate anyone with Mr. Starr, who just turned 70 last week by the way). Meanwhile, when the Fab Four’s moniker becomes part of a locale-specific prepositional phrase—“The Beatles of India,” “The Beatles of Zimbabwe”—it may mean one of two things: that the band in question is an explicit tribute act residing in said country (pull a search and you’ll choke) or, yes, the biggest band in the land (wherever that land may be). That it has earned a spot in the lexical canon (i.e., the Oxford English Dictionary circa December 2009, not the aforementioned “free encyclopedia”) is enough to ease my scowling at such pop-culture coinages.

Interestingly, other Beatles-related idioms have informally made it to people’s vocabularies. When someone alludes to a person who’s this-and-that-band’s “Yoko Ono,” I guess we can be in agreement that she (or he) is not the band’s best friend. I personally don’t approve of this dismissive usage—mainly due to the scope and influence of Mrs. Lennon’s art (evident in the career-spanning compendium Yes Yoko Ono)—but I guess history has been unkind to the Japanese widow.

As Lennon and Macca aimed to be “England’s Goffin and King”—a dream they doubtlessly achieved and even overshot—countless band members the world over aim to be viable replicas of the killer duo, to enjoy, even for a brief moment, being their band’s “John” or “Paul.” (Aldus Santos)

Samuel Johnson portrait from Wikimedia Commons. Liam Gallagher image (“oasis.liam.gallagher.007”) by freschwill, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. “Neil Harrison—Bootleg John Lennon” by hddod, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. Bed-in image (“Jlbedin3”) by Roy Kerwood, from Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.