Since we’ve got a thread about your favorite Beatle, I thought I’d steal an idea from the Fab Fourum podcast and start a thread about your favorite Beatle songs. Pick 5 Beatle songs as your favorites and 5 honorable mention. You can pick any Beatle tracks from the original releases, BBC recordings, Anthology recordings, anything as long it is a Beatle and not a solo recording.
I went to a website to refresh my memory of Beatle songs. Oh MY! Such a flood of memories! I remember listening to the songs, over and over and over! I go over the lyrics in my mind, and I’m transported to those days again.
What is especially poignant for me is the fact I’m hearing-impaired, and it is a progressive loss. I can only enjoy music I’ve heard in the past. I’ll catch snippets of a song, and once I remember it, my recall of the lyrics and the melody allows me to follow the music in my head. New stuff, forget it, but the oldies are still there, just waiting to be reawakened.
And they are wide awake now!
There are truly too many to list, and I certainly cannot pick a favorite.
In no particular order:
Paperback Writer
Eleanor Rigby
I Should Have Known Better
The Night Before
Help!
For No One
Martha My Dear
Within You Without You
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
I’m Looking Through You
Here Comes the Sun
Across the Universe
Because
If I Fell
I Am The Walrus
It’s All Too Much
A Day In The Life
She Loves You
Tomorrow Never Knows
The Fool On The Hill
All My Loving
Strawberry Fields Forever
Don’t Bother Me
Hey Jude
Favorite is favorite. Just so long as we’re all agreed that the best Beatles song is either “Penny Lane” or “Hey Jude”.
The former is truly finely crafted as to be absolutely perfect. The only knock is that it employs studio musicians.
The latter is great great great–and their biggest seller IIRC–but some of the lyrics are non-sensical. And much as I like long songs, the perfect pop song is not one that clocks in a 7 minutes.
I’d put “A Day in the Life” as a rather more distant third. It’s a bit too experimental to be considered finely crafted.
My favorite may well be “Within You and Without You”, but that’s just me.
These songs are all slickly produced. If I had to pick one that’s representative of the Beatles as a great rock-n-roll band, I’d go with “I Feel Fine”.
That was way too difficult. I can’t think of many bands that I could fill a top ten list all with songs that I really like. Even fewer that I have to pick and choose between songs that I really love to come with just ten.
Please Please Me. Their first #1, and in terms of pure pop, they never did anything better… there’s a new hook about every 2 measures.
She Loves You. Again, incredible pop, bursting with energy and joy.
If I Needed Someone. There should be one George song in the top five, and this is it for me. He took the sound the Byrds got from the Searchers and perfected it.
A Day in the Life.
Hey Jude. The Beatles emerging from psychedelia and demonstrating to the world that they were still number one. A wonderful, heartfelt, comforting and life-affirming song.
My honorable mentions would change from day to day; at the moment they’re all Lennon songs: “In My Life”, “Nowhere Man”, “Rain”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Revolution 1”.
On edit: Wait, I forgot “Yesterday”. That might nudge out “She Loves You”.
Wow…even five is just too difficult. (BTW, to the OP – did you like my Fab Fourum intro about Chicago winning two World Series in a row? )
But let’s see…
Strawberry Fields Forever
A Day In The Life
If I Needed Someone
She’s A Woman
I Am The Walrus
Favorite cover:
Leave My Kitten Alone
Five Beatles songs I can’t stand:
Long, Long, Long (gawd, how boring)
Things We Said Today (yawn)
Hello Goodbye (very pointless and dippy)
That Means A Lot (the re-make, not the version that’s on Anthology)
Mr. Moonlight (except the intro)
By far, most underrated Beatles song:
Old Brown Shoe
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