figuratively speaking … :-p
he did not “add value” to the song … that was my message … and the fact that they blew up a 2:30m to a 4:00m+ song does not help when your ideas are a little anemic.
That’s quite an interesting analysis. Thanks for sharing it!
I think Real Love is a great Beatley sounding song that felt very natural. Free as a Bird not so much, though it got more airplay. Interesting video for FaaB though.
I loved both Free as a Bird and Real Love. Now that we’ve heard what would have been the new song for Anthology 3, I think it’s best they did it the way they did it then.
I agree. John started singing about his life with Yoko and never stopped and I couldn’t give a shit about all that.
The bootleg demo that has been around for years is over 5 minutes. Paul did some significant trimming.
I always referred to Double Fantasy as “More Songs About Yoko and the Kids”.
I thought both the song and the video started out okay. But the song drags on getting more and more depressing, and parts of the video get really creepy. I liked seeing the current footage of current aging Beetles. And some of the archival footage was nice. But having them together, and faking the dead beetles singing this son, was just creepy to me.
But Just Like Starting Over and Woman were both excellent and catchy songs, made all the more poignant by John’s untimely death. Watching th3 Wheels wasn’t really Top 40 bu5 became so because of the sudden interest in the Double Fantasy album. Always liked I’m Losing You as well. Kiss Kiss Kiss I could do without.
But the recording itself has elements that were recorded decades apart, by Beatles at wildly different ages, working together on a song. I think it’s entirely appropriate that the video reflects that.
But they had John and George from 10 years or more before either of them worked on this song. How is that more appropriate than just having them all depicted at the same relative ages?
My pleasure. David Bennett’s music analysis videos are consistently excellent. (I love Rick Beato, too, but David is rather more, shall we say, organized).
It would have been nice to hear the late Ian McDonald’s take on this (his book Revolution in the Head did include his thoughts on Free as a Bird and Real Love). I assume Allan Pollack will do a purely musicological analysis — he’s still alive.
(In a lighter (or just more obsessive?) vein, there’s that “What Goes On” website/book on musical or technical “anomalies” in Beatles songs. The SDMB’s own Biffy the Elephant Shrew is cited in that.)
The Onion chimes in:
(Speaking as a hardcore Beatle Freak since 1964) Out of everything John recorded since The Fabs breakup, JLSO and Woman are the only two of his releases I’ve ever liked enough to put on a playlist. JLSO is indeed a terrific song. Woman is an anomaly for me — it’s yet another insipid MommyYoko Worship Hymn, but for some reason I can’t fathom, it moves me to not-quite-tears. Go figure.