For what it's worth, their production at the time was innovative even if their music was not so much. Their promotion was also innovative, and the band was careful to continuously popularize the innovations of better musicians, earning an undeserved reputation as innovators themselves.
So, I've never cared for most of their songwriting. A few exceptions, but, for the most part, not so much.
I heard a song of theirs once in the late 90s, and thought, "holy crap, this sounds like it was made 30 years later," in the same chronologically impossible way that some Can "sounds like" some Radiohead.
I haven't even thought about that since then, but your comment reminded me of that, and I think you're onto something. Whether they were ahead of their time production-wise, or just highly influential, could probably be argued to death, but there's no denying that Beck wouldn't sound like Beck were it not for the Beatles.
