Yeah “And Your Bird Can Sing” is a definitely a nice one. Not often a song will start right off with a four-bar guitar solo.
I don’t believe “Wait” has been mentioned yet. Unfortunately regarded by the Beatles as filler, I think it’s upbeat awesomeness.
I like how the floor tom roll goes right into the chorus like that.
Savoy Truffle (about George’s concern about Clapton’s concern of sugary foods wrecking their teeth) has that nifty brass, and another cool George solo.
Gotta agree. No question. This is a fantastic song with magnificent harmonization.
Things We Said Today, already mentioned, is probably my favorite Beatles song, for reasons I can’t really put into words. I still remember the first time I heard it while listening to Hard Days’ Night as a teenager in the late 80s or early 90s and just being floored by it. That opening strum of the A minor chord is just beatifully articulated and the chord changes that accompany the lyrics “someday you when I’m lonely, wishing you weren’t so far away” just sends chills down my spine. And then the move to the rocking bluesy/major tonality in the chorus. Just love, love, love this song.
Um, yeah. I LOVE this one too. And that’s why The Beatles are so fantastic. I could list 20 of their songs that are my number one favourite Beatle songs. And any one of them could be my favourite song overall, by anyone.
Something by George Harrison may be their best song period. I guess it is super popular, but not often listed at the top.
I’m Down is a great, flat out rocker.
Totally - and one of the few examples where Paul really let it out (“Helter Skelter” and “I’ve Got a Feeling” being the only other examples I can think of, sadly)
Awesome cover it by one of my fave guitarists, Mr. Adrian Belew.
Last time in all humanity I’ll double-post…
Paul also gives her in “Birthday” and parts of “Oh Darling”…
Probably more I’ll think of right after I post this - oh wells
“What You’re Doing” is a good song by Paul, on Beatles for Sale (end of '64), that nobody knows about. It sounds really timeless – it could easily have been a 70s Wings track, or an 80s McCartney solo tune.
Another George song: “I Me Mine”. Totally awesome song, don’t think I’ve ever heard it on the radio.
“Help” seems to be extremely rare for airplay, and it is an excellent Beatle song.
Notable for having been finished during the last Beatles recording session, in January 1970. Their next one was for Free as a Bird, 26 years later. Unfortunately, John failed to show up for either of these sessions.
This is the song I came in to mention. I’ve mentioned before that Ringo is the guy who taught me how to groove on an acoustic guitar, but this may be the song that sealed it, because this has just a great, grooving acoustic guitar strum. It’s also the first song to make me break out the old (well, new at the time) cassette recorder to lay down a second vocal part so that I could sing harmony with myself, as it was probably the first song for which my young, untrained ears could actually pick out the harmony.
I’ve got a soft spot for “I’ll Follow The Sun.” The melody is so lovely and the acoustic guitar so exquisite that one almost forgets that the lyrics reveal the singer to be a bit of a love 'em and leave 'em jerk. (Well, if you interpret the song one way. Interpreted another way, it could be the singer realizing that life is too short to waste on a girl who doesn’t really appreciate him: “One day you’ll know I was the one.”)
Another reason that song holds a special place in my heart is that it was one of the first songs I heard when I really started discovering the Beatles at around eleven, in the mid-eighties…sitting in the car with my mother on a summer afternoon, hearing it on the radio.
From the same album, there’s “No Reply,” another acoustic-based one with some great lyrics and harmonies. (And another one that can be read two different ways. Read it one way and you’ve got a hapless guy being given the run-around by a heartless girl…read it another way, as the authors of The 100 Best Beatles Songs do, we’ve got a borderline stalker and a girl who’s trying to avoid him. After all, if she’s gotten her family to run interference for her, she’s gotta feel pretty uneasy around him!)
“Helter Skelter”, a really kick-ass rocker, gets the WRONG kind of attention–mainly due to, as the authors of my aforementioned book put it, “a swastika-tattooed psychopath whose name will not sully this book.”
“Cry Baby Cry”, also off the White Album, is a neat mix of Alice-like whimsy and a strangely ominous feel (that seance at the end).
“Dear Prudence” has a beautiful hippie vibe.
I’ve come to like “Within You Without You” much more than I did. When I first heard it, with a friend who was also discovering the Beatles, we were eager to get to “When I’m Sixty-Four,” and WYWY seemed to drag on forever, with what sounded like several false endings. Now I can appreciate the intricate Indian music, and I actually like “Sixty-Four” a little less and WYWY far more.
The Beatles did 212 songs by 1970. Of those, probably 200 are songs that people can say don’t get enough airplay and start writing paeans to. How often do you hear “Eleanor Rigby” these days? No other single song of theirs in the 60s captured the general attention like that one. It changed the conversation about the place of rock bands in music. I think it’s indisputably, jaw-droppingly great, even if it’s a Paul song utterly unrepresentative of the Beatles sound. It’s at the top of the pyramid, yet is barely played.
The Beatles are like that. That’s why they’ll always be the best.
Yes, for Hey Bulldog. Such a fun song. But also, I Dig A Pony. That bass line gets me…well turned on.
Considering its ambitiously inventive melody and chord pattern (dig that juicy II chord – also known as “V of V” – in the fourth measure of the verse), I was surprised to learn that Paul wrote this really early on, and there’s a rare home recording to prove it – from 1960! (Paul did make some harmonic improvements for the late-1964 official recording).
He wrote “When I’m 64” as a teenager too.
I always thought Help was a pretty throwaway album until I realized that there are two versions. “The Night Before” and “Another Girl” get my votes for the songs most underplayed, if not almost unknown.
Hey Bulldog is so unheard of, that entire scene was cut from the movie in all its American showings. I had never even heard of either the song nor the scene in the movie until many years later, when I came upon the scene on YouTube.