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Meet The Beatles!
ElJeffe
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
The Beatles!
So I recently upgraded my phone plan to include unlimited data. I decided to celebrate this by burning as much data as I possibly could in as short a time as possible, and settled upon streaming music through YouTube during my morning and evening commutes. My commute time is just about 35-40 minutes, which is about the perfect amount of time to consume one album each way.
So who to start with? Well, I somewhat randomly chose the Beatles. Specifically, The Beatles, also known as their White album, also known as The One With That Godawful Fucking Song Near the End. You know the one I mean. Intrigued by this album, and its mixture of songs that I really loved and songs that I wished had faces so that I could punch them, I decided I would go back to the beginning and just listen to their whole damned catalogue, in chronological order.
Two albums per day is actually quite a bit of music. A single album generally represents a year or two or three of a band’s artistic endeavor. Or, for the Beatles, about 14 hours. By my count, during the 7 years of the Beatles’ peak popularity, beginning with Beatlemania in 1963 and ending with the release of Let It Be in 1970, they produced approximately 284,912 songs spread over 2,712 albums.
This is an exaggeration, but not much of one. The Beatles were extremely prolific in an extremely short period of time. And not only were they recording songs like nobody’s business, they were also kind of revolutionizing the entire face of music as we know it, becoming bigger than Jesus, and effectively inventing the modern pop album.
They were kind of a big deal.
So! This thread is to discuss the Beatles, their music, their contributions, their rise and fall, and other stuff that might pertain to John, Paul, George, and the Other One. To kick it off, I will highlight my Magical Mystery Tour (ololol!) of Beatles music by doling out random awards, because everyone loves random awards!
As an opening caveat, I will mention that I know very little about music, its history, its production, or anything other than what is fun to listen to in the car. And prior to this exercise, I knew virtually nothing about the Beatles except they had really famous hair.
Best Rock Song About Murder and Revenge
Run For Your Life, Rubber Soul.
This ditty, at the tail end of Rubber Soul, a delightful song about threatening to murder a young girl in a fit of jealous rage. Up-beat and full of energy, it is a great song that should probably not dedicate to the girl of your dreams.
Best Folk Tale About Murder and Revenge
Rocky Raccoon, The Beatles
I first heard this song when I was kid, and had no idea it was by the Beatles. It’s just plain fun, even if poor Rocky’s thirst for vengeance goes unquenched.
Best Quirky Pop Song About Murder and Revenge
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Abbey Road
This little brain worm is so darned catchy that you might not even realize that it’s about a gruesome string of serial killings until the second or third playthrough.
Best Children’s Song Inexplicably Cropping Up In the Middle of a Grown-Up Album
Yellow Submarine, Revolver
I am not sure what curious manner of time travel resulted in a song by The Wiggles winding up in the dead center of Revolver, but Yellow Submarine is quite delightful. If, you know, you’re five. Runner-up goes to Octupus’s Garden, which you might think is also a time-traveling Wiggles number, but is actually a time-traveling Spongebob Squarepants number.
Best Cover Song Featured In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Twist and Shout, Please Please Me
Fun Fact: John Lennon wrecked the shit out of his voice singing this song, and so it’s a good thing he nailed it in one take.
Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Not Being Revolution 9
Every Other Song Ever, Various
If ever a song could be said to embody the spirit of Yoko Ono, it’s Revolution 9, the nonsensical noise-symphony near the end of White album. Inspired by the principles of musique concrete (French for “there is a hornet in my ear”), Revolution 9 provided the world with something that everyone could aspire to not recreate in anyway. And, with the sole exception of Revolution 9, every other song has succeeded admirably. So great going, Literally Every Other Song Ever Written, you did the world proud!
Best Pre-Sgt. Pepper Song
We Can Work It Out, Single
I could be lazy about this and just give this award to Eleanor Rigby, which is admittedly a goddamn triumph. But We Can Work It Out epitomizes the magic of the Lennon/McCartney collaboration that was the heart and soul of the early Beatles. It’s catchy, quirky, and the lyrics perfectly capture that sense of trying to be the bigger man even though your buddy is acting like a giant fucking tool.
Best Post-Sgt. Pepper Song
With a Little Help From My Friends, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
This award was incredibly hard to decide, because the volume of amazing work that came out of the Beatles in the few years beginning with the release of Sgt. Pepper is goddamn staggering. The awesome Lewis Carrol absurdity of Come Together? The sheer brainworminess of Ob-La-Dee, Ob-La-Da? The counter-culture rock goodness of Revolution? In the end, I went with A Little Help mostly because I had to pick something, and also The Wonder Years was a pretty great show.
Best Album
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
There are two ways to go, here. Do I pick the album with the most songs that I absolutely adore (which would be Abbey Road)? Or do I go with consistent quality? I went with the latter. Sgt. Pepper isn’t the perfect album, but it’s damned close, faltering only one or twice with some self-consciously psychedelic nonsense in the middle. But it starts strong, it ends strong, and it invented the notion of the concept album. Sorry, Abbey Road.
Early Beatles or Late Beatles?
Late Beatles
The Beatles have hardly any outright bad songs during their early period, but they do suffer from a bit of sameness, which is especially noticeable when you listen to six or seven albums in a row over the course of a few days. The latter half of their legacy has an amazing amount of variety, and the evolution of their sound and constant need to push the envelope makes up for the fact that probably a full quarter of their later work is kind of terrible, with the White album epitomizing this unfortunate trend. If you’re cherry picking the good ones, though, it’s hard to go wrong with the back half of their oeuvre.
So let’s discuss The Beatles! Tell me why I am wrong and terrible!
So I recently upgraded my phone plan to include unlimited data. I decided to celebrate this by burning as much data as I possibly could in as short a time as possible, and settled upon streaming music through YouTube during my morning and evening commutes. My commute time is just about 35-40 minutes, which is about the perfect amount of time to consume one album each way.
So who to start with? Well, I somewhat randomly chose the Beatles. Specifically, The Beatles, also known as their White album, also known as The One With That Godawful Fucking Song Near the End. You know the one I mean. Intrigued by this album, and its mixture of songs that I really loved and songs that I wished had faces so that I could punch them, I decided I would go back to the beginning and just listen to their whole damned catalogue, in chronological order.
Two albums per day is actually quite a bit of music. A single album generally represents a year or two or three of a band’s artistic endeavor. Or, for the Beatles, about 14 hours. By my count, during the 7 years of the Beatles’ peak popularity, beginning with Beatlemania in 1963 and ending with the release of Let It Be in 1970, they produced approximately 284,912 songs spread over 2,712 albums.
This is an exaggeration, but not much of one. The Beatles were extremely prolific in an extremely short period of time. And not only were they recording songs like nobody’s business, they were also kind of revolutionizing the entire face of music as we know it, becoming bigger than Jesus, and effectively inventing the modern pop album.
They were kind of a big deal.
So! This thread is to discuss the Beatles, their music, their contributions, their rise and fall, and other stuff that might pertain to John, Paul, George, and the Other One. To kick it off, I will highlight my Magical Mystery Tour (ololol!) of Beatles music by doling out random awards, because everyone loves random awards!
As an opening caveat, I will mention that I know very little about music, its history, its production, or anything other than what is fun to listen to in the car. And prior to this exercise, I knew virtually nothing about the Beatles except they had really famous hair.
Best Rock Song About Murder and Revenge
Run For Your Life, Rubber Soul.
This ditty, at the tail end of Rubber Soul, a delightful song about threatening to murder a young girl in a fit of jealous rage. Up-beat and full of energy, it is a great song that should probably not dedicate to the girl of your dreams.
Best Folk Tale About Murder and Revenge
Rocky Raccoon, The Beatles
I first heard this song when I was kid, and had no idea it was by the Beatles. It’s just plain fun, even if poor Rocky’s thirst for vengeance goes unquenched.
Best Quirky Pop Song About Murder and Revenge
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Abbey Road
This little brain worm is so darned catchy that you might not even realize that it’s about a gruesome string of serial killings until the second or third playthrough.
Best Children’s Song Inexplicably Cropping Up In the Middle of a Grown-Up Album
Yellow Submarine, Revolver
I am not sure what curious manner of time travel resulted in a song by The Wiggles winding up in the dead center of Revolver, but Yellow Submarine is quite delightful. If, you know, you’re five. Runner-up goes to Octupus’s Garden, which you might think is also a time-traveling Wiggles number, but is actually a time-traveling Spongebob Squarepants number.
Best Cover Song Featured In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Twist and Shout, Please Please Me
Fun Fact: John Lennon wrecked the shit out of his voice singing this song, and so it’s a good thing he nailed it in one take.
Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Not Being Revolution 9
Every Other Song Ever, Various
If ever a song could be said to embody the spirit of Yoko Ono, it’s Revolution 9, the nonsensical noise-symphony near the end of White album. Inspired by the principles of musique concrete (French for “there is a hornet in my ear”), Revolution 9 provided the world with something that everyone could aspire to not recreate in anyway. And, with the sole exception of Revolution 9, every other song has succeeded admirably. So great going, Literally Every Other Song Ever Written, you did the world proud!
Best Pre-Sgt. Pepper Song
We Can Work It Out, Single
I could be lazy about this and just give this award to Eleanor Rigby, which is admittedly a goddamn triumph. But We Can Work It Out epitomizes the magic of the Lennon/McCartney collaboration that was the heart and soul of the early Beatles. It’s catchy, quirky, and the lyrics perfectly capture that sense of trying to be the bigger man even though your buddy is acting like a giant fucking tool.
Best Post-Sgt. Pepper Song
With a Little Help From My Friends, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
This award was incredibly hard to decide, because the volume of amazing work that came out of the Beatles in the few years beginning with the release of Sgt. Pepper is goddamn staggering. The awesome Lewis Carrol absurdity of Come Together? The sheer brainworminess of Ob-La-Dee, Ob-La-Da? The counter-culture rock goodness of Revolution? In the end, I went with A Little Help mostly because I had to pick something, and also The Wonder Years was a pretty great show.
Best Album
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
There are two ways to go, here. Do I pick the album with the most songs that I absolutely adore (which would be Abbey Road)? Or do I go with consistent quality? I went with the latter. Sgt. Pepper isn’t the perfect album, but it’s damned close, faltering only one or twice with some self-consciously psychedelic nonsense in the middle. But it starts strong, it ends strong, and it invented the notion of the concept album. Sorry, Abbey Road.
Early Beatles or Late Beatles?
Late Beatles
The Beatles have hardly any outright bad songs during their early period, but they do suffer from a bit of sameness, which is especially noticeable when you listen to six or seven albums in a row over the course of a few days. The latter half of their legacy has an amazing amount of variety, and the evolution of their sound and constant need to push the envelope makes up for the fact that probably a full quarter of their later work is kind of terrible, with the White album epitomizing this unfortunate trend. If you’re cherry picking the good ones, though, it’s hard to go wrong with the back half of their oeuvre.
So let’s discuss The Beatles! Tell me why I am wrong and terrible!
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ElJeffe on
+20
Posts
Thank goodness for Paul being fairly normal.
Question: Best post-Beatles career? McCartney seems like a shoo-in, but Harrison did some really excellent work in his too-brief life after the band broke up. We all know that Ringo is not the right answer here, but I'm not sure Lennon is either.
And I'm actually a fan of Revolution 9. It has an unsettling, apocalyptic, quality. Would I want to listen to that kind of thing for hours? Maybe not, but I think it's pretty awesome that they put something that was that out there on the album. I think avant-garde stuff often benefits from being put next to more conventional stuff, and vice versa - they compliment each other. Michelangelo can help you appreciate the freedom and boldness of Jackson Pollock and Pollock can help you appreciate the careful craftsmanship of Michelangelo.
McCartney sounds like kind of an asshole to work with, too. Like the fact that he would wait until Ringo left the studio and then rerecord all of his contributions.
They were an amazing team, but holy shit is it apparent why stuff went south.
As to best post Beatles career? I'd probably go with McCartney, based on the volume of great work composing on various mediums, but I admit I know little of Harrison's work beyond "Got My Mind Set On You".
I was serious when I said it was delightful. It's just so discongruous when you get to it, with all the cartoon sound effects and everything. Just sort of a Wait, What? moment.
Mother is one of my all time favorite songs though - raw and emotional and brutal with the kind of simplicity that comes from absolute confidence.
I'm a big fan of Imagine too, even if more cynical people turn their noses up at its wide eyed idealism.
Give Peace A Chance kind of makes me want to punch a hippy tho - it's the phrasing, I think. "All we are saying is give peace a chance" sounds like a needling, passive aggressive mother - "all I'm saying is you could stop by and visit once and a while. But if you're too busy..."
My problem with Imagine more stems from the fact that a)The Beatles absolutely benefited from all of the systems the song decries, and b) Lennon's own materialism makes the thing ring rather hollow.
there's not quite as much filler as early beatles, and most of the filler that's there is more interesting (though, the cringeworthy stuff is way more cringeworthy)
gonna go with white album as my favorite. it's got the most, worst filler, but it's also got such great strong material on it that trying to cut it down from a double album to a single album is an exercise in futility. you can't quite make it work, and good god that side C
too bad the album actually ends right after helter skelter. they just stopped writing and were like "yep, album's done. ship it"*
*said from different rooms, not to each other, as they fought bitterly about every damn thing until ringo started to cry
joy to play, fantastic art design, and the mixes of the music they did for the game are at times superior to the mixes available anywhere else
good example of one of the game mixes that really benefits. the drums are finally more prominent than the tambourine!
I can't really think of many songs on that album that I feel like listening to very often, though.
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It was poor by the Beatles' standards, but it was fine. I really like Get Back.
I've been trying to settle on a few compilation albums, because I'd like to get a good cross section of Beatles songs, and I don't want to drop hundreds of dollars picking up all the studio albums.
The Red and Blue albums are nice, but I'm kinda bummed they don't include Oh Darling, because goddamn that song. Maybe I'll grab those two albums plus Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper.
Okay first off, something on Sgt. Pepper, can not be Post-Sgt Pepper.
Second, this isn't even the best version of this song. Joe Cocker's cover is like 100 times more interesting to listen to(plus that version is actually the Wonder Years theme). Which pretty much sums up my feelings on most of the Beatles' catalog. The more pop stuff, while I appreciate how perfectly pure ear-crack it is, just seems like music written for a preteen girls summer camp. This is especially true of the early stuff which just drips in "Well Gee Gosh That'd Be Swell".
Ultimately I don't think the core Beatles' sound is really where my musical preferences sit; which is why for the best Beatles' song they needed a non-Beatle to carry them up the mountain, While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
Keep watching Amazon - I grabbed the Mono Masters boxset for like $120 a number of years ago during a Black Friday sale, it probably would go down to $100 nowadays. You get that, only things left to get is Abbey Road and I guess Let It Be.
Get Back is included in the Mono Masters collection of singles (so I still don't really need Let It Be), and it also has Hey Bulldog, so no reason to get the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, either!
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Gotta agree here. The Beatles version is inoffensive but Croker's cover is awesome.
Also Ringo feels like he had the nicest post-band career? Not the most successful and certainly not the most popular, but he did fine and was a nice guy about it all. I admit I'm biased because this is a huge part of my childhood:
In more on-topic for this thread, if you like puns and psychedelic set pieces, everyone should watch the Yellow Submarine movie.
Ringo: Oh yeah, I used to go out with his sister.
Old Fred: His sister?
Ringo: Yeah, Phyllis. I wonder what would happen if I pulled this lever?
Old Fred: You mustn't do that!
Ringo: I can't help it, I'm a born Lever-puller
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But bleh, personal tastes. It does feel like I'm missing something by just not getting it, but I can't get into their music at all despite attempting it several times. I figure that by this point I'll just better call it a wash and assume that I'll never learn to like them.
It feels like Harrison spent the last few years of the Beatles saving up enough good songs for one or two albums, whereas Paul is just an everlasting font of music.
Also McCartney has one of my favourite album covers.
Why yes, that is Christopher Lee and James Coburn. Also Clement Freud, Michael Parkinson, Kenny Lynch and John Conteh.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
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B.) Everyone here has something in their musical preferences that they need to thank the Beatles for inventing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles'_recording_technology
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
favourite song? Oh gosh. Here Comes the Sun or Norwegian Wood are up there for me. I don't know if I can really pick a favourite favourite. I'll happily listen to those 2 albums for hours though.
Beatles are definitely one of my favourite all time bands. listened to them so much growing up.
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Beatles covers by Tommy Emmanuel (thank you for him Australia.)
Zeppo?
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
nyuk nyuk nyuk
Paul: Can't be. It's got two eyes.
John: Must be a bicyclops then.
Ringo: There's another one.
John: A whole cyclopedia!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445922/
She has been singing up a storm since. Favorite Beatles song? Probably Dear prudence. Not the most complex song but there is something about the tempo i adore.
Pretty much the same here. I come from a family of absolute ridiculous Beatles fanatics so I'm sure overexposure didn't help. I think I would probably like them more if I wasn't constantly told that they're the best and greatest band in the history of forever.
Beatles Rock Band was pretty fun though. And obviously Ringo is the best Beatle.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Harrison's All Things Must Pass is an amazing album. It's up there with the best Beatles albums.
My favorite from it:
Also, Harrison helped fund the Monty Python movies. So go him.
Yellow Submarine is a terrible song but a wonderful little movie. I was crushed when I found out the characters aren't actually voiced by The Beatles, but by soundalikes. I haven't seen Help! (the movie) since I was a kid, but I remember enjoying its goofy, wacky-caper charm. Across the Universe, on the other hand, I thought was an awful movie. Some solid covers, musically speaking, but as a film it was a Technicolor vision of every single 60s cliche you can think of.
I don't think it stinks, but it's probably my least favorite album
'Within you, without you' is boring and 'She's Leaving' is a drag.
best Beatles song: Hey Bulldog .... holy crap that song is incredible.
I've also kind of wondered why the Beatles don't get lumped in with Zep as metal fore runners. I mean sure, the vast majority isn't metal sounding, but neither is the majority of Led Zeppelin. Helter Skelter is metal as hell though.
Octopus' Garden is a pretty good song! That funky little intro is super fun to play!
also:
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Kidding, they are one of my favorite groups ever.
Abbey Road is at the top of my list, because not only is it goddamn wonderful from start to finish, it has the two best Beatles songs ever on it from my favorite Beatle (George Harrison, Something and Here Comes the Sun), it also has The Medley, and on top of all those aforementioned things, it was recorded at the height of strife between all of the Beatles, so the fact that it exists at all is fucking incredible, but its sheer quality in the face of everything that, by all rights, should have gone wrong, is nothing short of a miracle.
Maybe so! But I love Fool on the Hill, and Strawberry Fields, and Penny Lane too.
(Sir Paul McCartney was one of the composers of it, in case you're confused)