My Favourite Beatles Songs, or, Why Bother?

The Beatles, that well known, much-loved, barely listened to (1), behemoth of popular culture.

The Beatles, the band with the most songs in my collection (second place? Wagner… square that particular circle, and you’re better than Freud).

The Beatles, where to start? Why bother starting? As the Pitchfork article referenced above states, this is a band that’s generated large amounts of ‘dull commentary’; so, why am I doing this? Why submit you all to a highly subjective, completely personal and ultimately useless list? Because, people of the world, lists rule. There are books of lists (2); Nick Hornby wrote a novel based entirely around a list (3); fellow music lovers the world over follow that paradigm of popular taste, the most well known list alive: the Top 40.

As with any list I might compile, there shall be no ranking by merit: that’s far too hard for my poor brain to judge, and so, in chronological order (by UK album release, as the US disparities in the early days make my head spin), here, by unpopular demand, are my favourite Beatles songs, and the reasons/reactions why.

1. I Saw Her Standing There, Please Please Me, 1963 – it’s the biting, chunky chord progression that drives this forward, the first track on the first side of their first album. The lyrics here, classically for early Beatles, are quite simple, yet express that early 60s burgeoning youth movement, that exploded from the latent build-up in the 1950s. The guitar solo is almost expendable, but it’s the swift, solid drumming of Ringo Starr that brings me back time and time again. The snare cracks, the really quick drum rolls just before the choruses and bridges made this a joy to spin when DJ-ing, and also a great song to pep up my mood. A class start, and easily the best song on Please Please Me.
2. Help!, Help!, 1965 – I’ve skipped two years, many good singles and album tracks, to the title song from Help! for one reason: maturity. It’s a lot more subtle, pensive and dark than the previous few years, even such songs as Misery and I’m A Loser. The influence of The Byrds can be heard in the janglier guitars, but here, it’s the harmonies that kill me. On the surface, this can sound like quite a wistful song, but it’s a dark melancholy heart that beats within.
3. Drive My Car, Rubber Soul, 1965 – another one from 1965, but from the second album in that year, Rubber Soul, Drive My Car is, like Help!, a song that can be traced pretty conclusively (in my inexpert mind, anyway) to a specific songwriter: Paul McCartney. The sly, convoluted lyrics, poppier melody, and greatly expanded basslines highlight this for me; correct me if I’m wrong. Musically, the band had gone leaps and bounds since 1963, and here we hear echoey pianos (that add such power to the song), bass higher up in the mix, and more conplicated guitar parts. Technically, this song is astounding, but it’s the overall atmosphere and mood: sexy, slinky, and yet with a slight air of foreboding and a whiff of danger.
4. Eleanor Rigby, Revolver, 1966 – for the interests of fairness, I’m not going to rehash my entire review of Revolver, and I’ll keep its entries here to just two; surprisingly, omitting Taxman was an easy decision. Eleanor Rigby is one of the most powerfully heart-rending pieces of music I’ve ever heard (up there with Barber’s Adagio for Strings et al); the strings build this massive sense of tension, while the harmonies enhance and support the desperately lonely lyrics that McCartney supplies.
5. Tomorrow Never Knows, Revolver, 1966 – this was the first song I heard from Revolver, having read about this, and skipped straight to it when I first picked up the CD. That beat, building the basis for hip-hop, or so it seems when you listen to it; all the melodic, atonal and tape-edited weirdness that jumps around the speakers, invades your mind and damages your sanity; Lennon’s ghostly, Leslie-speakered wail; it’s the world’s safest acid trip. I can’t imagine a world without this song, even if it’s one of the least likely songs you’ll ever hear on classic rock radio.
6. Back In The U.S.S.R., The Beatles, 1968 – eagle eyes readers will wonder what happened to 1967, and that landmark in critical pop history, Sgt. Pepper. Well, I hate it. It’s overblown, and contains songs I always seem to end up skipping whenever they pop up. Not so ‘The White Album’. One of their funniest albums, with anything and everything sprawled over it, this humorous political comment on the Cold War, with (in my mind) the best lyrics McCartney ever penned: “Show me round the snow-peaked mountains way down south, take me to your Daddy’s farm, let me hear your balalaikas ringing out, come and keep your Comrade warm…” is possibly one of the easiest songs to DJ, one of the best songs to bounce around a room to and containing just about everything that is good about The Beatles.
7. I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Abbey Road, 1969 – my highpoint of their last album (yes, we all know it came out before Let It Be, but it was recorded afterwards…). Slow, crawling, yearning, and with some quality guitar playing from Lennon and Harrison. It foreshadowed their respective solo careers, with Lennon going in for some crazy blues stuff in the mid-70s, and contains Billy Preston doing his gospel organ thing in the background. Soulful in a way that the Motown covers and rock ‘n’ roll rip-offs just couldn’t do.
8. Dig A Pony, Let It Be, 1970 – it makes no sense, although the lines about penetration do sound a tad suspect. It’s the flipside to I Want You (She’s So Heavy), in some ways, reflecting the same sentiment, and even the same kind of crawling tempo, but whereas that song was dark and dirty, this is more uplifting, and almost hymnal. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, even as the Beatles found their backs against the wall and the knives were out at eachothers throats by this point. Lennon might have hated it (4), but for some reason, it’s stuck with me much more than the rest of Let It Be.
9. Lady Madonna, The Beatles 1, 2000 (1968) – placed at this end of the list, as I didn’t want to put it in as a chronological single, and the context in which I heard it was that 2000 hits compilation. It’s a brilliant tune, absolutely stunning, and does all the usual Paul McCartney things: clever lyrics, upbeat tune, super vocals and striding piano work. A story about a prostitute, her children and all the attendant Catholic imagery he could stick in, this song, quite simply, rocks. I’ve been reduced to cliché here, but for some reason, that’s the best word for it.
10. Hey Jude, The Beatles 1, 2000 (1968) – one of the most overplayed songs in the history of pop music, but the gently building dynamics still blow me away. The scope for improvisation over that chord progression is boundless, and the vocal ad-libs at the end are unsurpassed in my Beatles listening. Epic is the best word for this, and it’s yet another McCartney tune that makes it onto my list. When I first heard this, as the finale to a school variety concert, the backing band decided that they would in fact rock out, and the guitarist played the very solo that would make this the perfect song: wicked, dirty and twisted, exactly the sort of solo that Harrison, McCartney or Lennon would have provided had this song come from 1966.

So, what have we all learned? Nothing, if not that I’m a McCartney fan more than a Lennon one. It must be something to do with the ear for melody: Lennon was better at the darker, scarier, paranoid and deeply emotionally scarred songs, whilst also writing some of the greatest classics known in the canon. However, McCartney wrote tunes that have wormed their way into my subconscious, Lady Madonna and Drive My Car particularly. This is the kind of list that is always subject to revision, debate and discussion; I would probably give you a different list in a week’s time, and then another in a fortnight.

References:

(1) – Mark Richardson, The Beatles – ‘Love’, reviewed at Pitchfork (30/11/2006)

(2) – Irving Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Amy Wallace, The Book of Lists (1977)

(3) – Nick Hornby, 31 Songs (2002)

(4) – Richie Unterberger, Dig A Pony, reviewed at AMG (no date)

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