Previous polls (still active): Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles For Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, and **Sgt. Pepper’s**.
What may prove a controversial hybrid. But there can still be only one–which would you choose?
You just asked me to choose between Hey Bulldog, I am the Walrus, and Strawberry Fields, and those are probably three of my five favorite Beatles songs right there. This may take me a while.
Strawberry Fields (especially when I think of John’s demo from the Anthology series).
“Hey Bulldog” – one of the Beatles’s top ten songs, and by far the most overlooked.
Second choice is Harrison’s brilliant, “Only a Northern Song.” If it had replaced “Within You Without You” on Sgt. Pepper – as it was intended to do – it would make Sgt. Pepper absolutely perfect.
Penny Lane, of course.
Someone, I think, is in my tree…
I’m going to overlook that I don’t consider the album version of MMT a true studio album, because it’s so damn good. If it did count it would be a contender for best Beatles album of them all. And Hey Bulldog and It’s All Too Much (possibly my favourite George song) from Yellow Submarine are fine additions.
Really very difficult… could have been Strawberry Fields Forever, All You Need is Love, or even Penny Lane, which I didn’t really appreciate until I saw Howard Goodall lavishing it with praise on TV. But I have to go for I am the Walrus, just total genius.
Shoot, I was planing to vote for Hey Bulldog when you did the Yellow Submarine poll. It loses put to I am a Walrus, but just slightly, as does Strawberry Fields.
BTW, you left out Yellow Submarine! (Not that it comes close to these three.)
This is almost as obvious as the last poll. Essentially, it comes down to two, maybe three songs: “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Penny Lane”, and maybe “I Am the Walrus”. Of those, I can’t see how you couldn’t choose “Strawberry Fields Forever”, excellent though “Penny Lane” most definitely is.
So, yes, I went with “Strawberry Fields Forever”.
I went with “Hey Bulldog.” I tended to go with the more mainstream choices for the other Beatles polls, but this is one in which I like one of the less known ones better.
Repeat songs get excluded (as you’ll discover when Past Masters comes along).
I have never understood the affection for “Hello Goodbye”, by far my least favorite of all Beatles songs. The music is facile and repetitious and the lyrics sound like they were written by a mentally-challenged 5-year old. There are some songs of theirs that I might consider overrated or pedestrian or pretentious or second-tier or twee, but “HG” is the only Beatles song that I have to consider unilaterally moronic.
Penny Lane is in my ear, and in my vote. 2nd easiest choice of these polls.
Penny Lane is my favorite Beatle song of all time. But these *are *difficult choices.
Almost went with Penny Lane, almost went with Fool on the Hill, ended up with Strawberry Fields. Hard one.
Magical Mystery Tour was the first Beatles album I ever bought. (One of the first albums I ever bought, period.) “Strawberry Fields Forever” was the song I had to get.
I’m sorry Yellow Submarine got lumped in with MMT–though it’s understandable–so I don’t get to put in a vote for the underrated “Only a Northern Song.”
Replace “Hello Goodbye” with “All You Need Is Love” and I might agree with you.
This one is really hard for me. I’m tempted to go with Hello Goodbye to counter to be contrary. I’ve always liked it but it is not really a contender. Hey Bulldog is a song that I only recently discovered and it is probably the Beatle song that I have had the most pleasure listening to this year. Very tempted to select it. I can not believe that no one has voted for Baby, You’re a Rich Man. What a great song. I love Penny lane too.
But in the end its between Walrus, Strawberry Fields. I’m going with Strawberry Fields.
“Hey Bulldog” is my favorite, but “Strawberry Fields” is the best. A total masterpiece. That song transports you to a different plane of existence (no drugs required). Man, what a creative group of people. Listening to the evolution of that song from acoustic demo to the finished product really makes you appreciate their collective genius. They used the studio as an instrument. Rock would never be the same.
A difficult one for sure but I’m surprised my ultimate choice, The Fool on the Hill, doesn’t even seem to figure in people’s struggles here.
I’m surprised but gratified “Hey Bulldog” is getting as much love as it is. One of my favorites as well.