Your Top 5 Beatles songs

Post by **The Dreaming** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 2:30 am

1) I Want You (She's So Heavy)
2) While My Guitar Gently Weeps
3) A Day In The Life
4) Elenor Rigby
5) Blackbird

So hard to make just 5. Hell, it would be hard to make a top 5 off the just The White Album list, but here it is. In order too. What are your faves?

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 2:50 am

Great picks, Dreaming. Here's mine:

1. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
2. Something
3. You Never Give Me Your Money
4. Sexy Sadie
5. Golden Slumbers
6. Come Together
7. Because
8. Dear Prudence
9. Strawberry Fields Forever
10. I Want You (She's So Heavy)
11. The End

Obviously, Abbey Road is my favorite album, but I've got everything they ever did (since A Hard Day's Night, anyway).

Post by **The Dreaming** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 3:11 am

Hehe, I knew you would be the first to reply Foul. Nice top 5 you got there.

I went ahead and picked 5, which is hard to do for the Beatles I know, but these are the ones I listen too time and time again. I sing them in the shower and on the way to class. Sexie Sadie is definately in my top 10. I am a little upset that you neglected "She Came in Through The Bathroom Window" from your (nearly) all Abbey Road list.

Edit: I also always find myself singing that little teeny song at the VERY end of Abbey Road. Do you do that too?

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 3:15 am

Nay, usually too stunned after "The End" to even hear "Her Majesty"!

12. A Day in the Life
13. Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
14. She Came in Through The Bathroom Window
15. Happiness Is a Warm Gun
16. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
17. Here, There, and Everywhere
18. I Am The Walrus
19. Eleanor Rigby
20. Fixing A Hole
21. Across the Universe (would be in my top 10, but Lennon said the Beatles never made a good recording of it, and I tend to agree)
22. All You Need Is Love ("Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game. It’s easy.")

I could go on to 100!

Post by **The Dreaming** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 3:34 am

I always wonder how great the White Album would have been without Revolution 9, Wild Honey Pie, and that damn piggies song, as well as a few others I mindlessly skip. So many good songs, why did they have to put in a few bad ones too? It is so close to being the perfect album.

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 3:37 am

Eh, I don't listen to Wild Honey Pie or Piggies much, but Revolution 9, whilst on the surface appears to be chaos, actually has a very tight and consistent structure. And I like to play it in the background sometimes.

Post by **matrixman** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:04 am

"...number nine...number nine...number nine..."

I came to like the track. It grew on me.

The one song on the White Album I tend to skip is O-Blah-Di O-Blah-Da (and I don't like the song enough that I don't care if I've mispelled it). It goes on my list of least favorite Beatles songs, which is thankfully a short list.

Anyway...

Five favorite songs--in alphabetical order:

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
Rain
Something
Tomorrow Never Knows
While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Post by **Nathan** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:08 am

in no particular order my top 5 are:

Paperback writer
Nowhere man
Elenor Rigby
Norwegian wood
Maxwell's silver hammer

and if I could have 6:

There are places I remember

edit: missed an s

Post by **The Dreaming** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:11 am

Matrixman wrote:"...number nine...number nine...number nine..."

I came to like the track. It grew on me.

The one song on the White Album I tend to skip is O-Blah-Di O-Blah-Da (and I don't like the song enough that I don't care if I've mispelled it). It goes on my list of least favorite Beatles songs, which is thankfully a short list.

Whaaat?! You actually listen to revelution 9 and skip O-bla-di O-bla-da? Shameful. My only problem with the song is that it has the misfortune of being between Dear Prudence and While my Guitar gently weeps. Personally, I always thought Bungalow Bill was a very bland song. But O-bla-di O-bla-da is a great song! Its one of the good things about the White Album!

Post by **matrixman** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:51 am

Guess I touched a raw nerve there. That song is not one of the highlights of the White Album, to my ears. We'll have to agree to disagree.

But since you like the song, Dreaming, let me try to assuage some of your outrage. Looking through my Beatlesongs book, here's some interesting notes about the song:

The other Beatles became upset over doing so much work on this McCartney song.

Richard Lush, second engineer: "After about four or five nights doing the song, John Lennon came to the session really stoned, totally out of it on something or other, and he said, 'Alright, we're gonna do Ob-la-di Ob-la-da.' He went straight to the piano and smashed the keys with an almighty amount of volume, twice the speed of how they'd done it before, and said, 'This is it! Come on!' He was really aggravated. That was the version they ended up using."

Paul McCartney: "A fella who used to hang around the clubs used to say [Jamaican accent], 'ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on,' and he got annoyed when I did a song of it, 'cause he wanted a cut. I said, 'Come on, Jimmy, it's just an expression. If you'd written the song, you could have had the cut.' He also used to say, 'Nothin's too much, just outta sight.' He was just one of those guys who had great expressions, you know."

Stewart Copeland, Police drummer, speaking on how drummers have to play in sympathy to the singer: "Articulation of the words should really determine the overall riff of the whole thing....'Ob-la-di' has an accent. 'ob-la-da' has an accent, 'life goes on...' sort of leads you into that ska feel. There's a definite scansion to those lyrics, which is probably why they ended up playing a ska beat. In fact, that's one of the first examples of white reggae."

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:01 pm

Never had a problem with Ob-la-di Ob-la-da. Not one I listen to a lot, but I particularly love the piano intro. Great tune, great lyrics, bridge/chorus/everything. Then again, it is a Beatles song.

Also, I've never understood the backlash toward it. I think it's just one of those tunes people love to beat up on--a bandwagon thing. Hell, most bands would give anything to make a song like that. Same goes for Maxwell's Silver Hammer, which gets a lot of flak.

It's like grousing over one of Shakespeare's plays. So what if not every play is a Hamlet? It's all great, and, personally, if every play he wrote was a Hamlet, his overall catalogue would be more boring, I think. You gotta have the fun granny tunes to offset the big, overblown epic-ness of stuff like Weeps.

Post by **matrixman** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:13 pm

Lennon hated the song. That's not too surprising, considering that major cracks in the Lennon/McCartney partnership were developing at the time.

Post by **danlo** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:14 pm

You don't listen to Piggies? Damm! Talk about an anti-Yippie Cultural Gap-the song is a frickin' classic!!!!

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:15 pm

Lennon hated most Paul songs of Ob-la-da's nature, such as When I'm Sixty Four and the said Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

And danlo: I personally like Piggies. It has the baroque thing going and plus it's cynical George at his best and weirdest.

Post by **danlo** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:17 pm

I don't know--Blue Jay Way seriously tripped me out!

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:22 pm

Oh yeah--strike the "weirdest" off Piggies, then. Blue Jay Way wins that one! Concerning "weirdest for" Piggies: I was thinking the lyric line where it talked about the pigs "eating their bacon". Freaky image!

Post by **danlo** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 5:35 pm

Eating their young..."Eat the Rich!"

I still think I Saw Her Standing There is the best pure Beatles song...

Post by **The Dreaming** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 7:11 pm

Hmm, what you said about Lennon certainly makes him seem like a stuck up a$$. I am really tired of artists who take themselves too seriously. I always loved goofy inane little songs like "When I'm Sixty-Four" and Maxwell's Silver Hammer. Artists need to learn to embrace the inane sometimes. That is one reason I like the flaming lips so much. They have got to be the most self effacing band I have ever seen. Also, no band that writes a song called "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part 1" takes themselves too seriously. Then again, they wrote do you realize, which is a marvelously poignant and beautiful song.

So basically, you don't have to produce nothing but deep, meaningful, eloquent music to be a good artist. What I love so much about the Beatles is that they are capable of writing a song like "Hard Days Night" and they are also capable of writing a song like "Eleanor Rigby". If everything they ever produced sounded like weeps, they wouldn't be the Beatles, they would be some other forgettable 60s band.

Post by **Idlewilder** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 4:04 pm

Wow, just five?

In no particular order:

Tomorrow Never Knows
In My Life
We Can Work It Out
Help
The Medly on Abbey Road (is that cheating?)

Of course, this list changes from day to day. That's the magic of the Beatles!

Anyone get the Lennon Acoustic CD yet? Good to hear John, but none of the stuff is terribly new.

Post by **Nav** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 10:28 pm

Heh, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da has been voted the worst song ever by a British survey:

news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3737383

It is pretty bad, but some of the other songs deserve to be smote from the Earth itself so I'm surprised it came top.

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Your Top 5 Beatles songs

Your Top 5 Beatles songs