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Vulture writer ranks all 213 Beatles songs

Obviously whenever these lists come out, we can find all manner of ways to nitpick the choices. But someone who thinks "She's Leaving Home" is a "bathetic lugubrious mess" while praising the nonsensical bullshit of "I Am the Walrus" is a fucking hypocritical moron of the highest order. I still like "I Am the Walrus," mind you, but this guy is knocking Paul for his trite lyrics on "Ob-La-Di" and then praises the most nonsensical song ever written as genius? Get the fuck outta here.

My top 5 (no order):
A Day in the Life
Norwegian Wood
Across the Universe (naked version)
Eleanor Rigby
While My Guitar Gently Weeps

"I Am The Walrus" works as a trippy stream of imagery, given the way the underlying music is written to complement it, whereas "She's Leaving Home" is just trite as fuck.

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Re: Penny Lane being that high, if you guys have not watched it, British composer and music pop historian Howard Goodall makes a pretty decent case for it being one of the group's most musically complex works, with excellent interplay between the lyrics and the music.

Shitting on Paul is stupid, though. Lennon was a better lyricist, but McCartney was easily the better musician and had one of the finest ears for hooks in the latter half of the twentieth century.
 

tanooki27

Member
Obviously whenever these lists come out, we can find all manner of ways to nitpick the choices. But someone who thinks "She's Leaving Home" is a "bathetic lugubrious mess" while praising the nonsensical bullshit of "I Am the Walrus" is a fucking hypocritical moron of the highest order. I still like "I Am the Walrus," mind you, but this guy is knocking Paul for his trite lyrics on "Ob-La-Di" and then praises the most nonsensical song ever written as genius? Get the fuck outta here.

My top 5 (no order):
A Day in the Life
Norwegian Wood
Across the Universe (naked version)
Eleanor Rigby
While My Guitar Gently Weeps

nothing in she's leaving home or ob la da has anything as good as "yellow mellow custard dripping from a dead dog's eye." walrus is a badass unique rock tune

I like your top five tho
 

III-V

Member
Get Back at 105?

2YFfur1.gif


Sorry OP this list is fucking trash. Every last ounce. Spittle that doesn't make it all the way to the floor.
 
Wow someone else gets it.

Yeah! I also really like this anecdote Paul told about the Fixing a Hole recording session. Class act. I can't imagine many modern rock/pop stars doing that.
Also present at the session was a man who had arrived at McCartney's house in St John's Wood, shortly before McCartney was due to depart for the studio, and introduced himself as Jesus Christ. McCartney later recalled: "I thought, Well, it probably isn't. But if he is, I'm not going to be the one to turn him away ... There were a lot of casualties about then. We used to get a lot of people who were maybe insecure or going through emotional breakdowns or whatever. So I said, 'I've got to go to a session, but if you promise to be very quiet and just sit in a corner, you can come.' So he did, he came to the session and he did sit very quietly and I never saw him after that."
 

flyover

Member
I'm in no position to judge anyone else's list, considering I'd put "Ticket to Ride" at the top of mine. Ungh, those drums.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
https://www.thebeatles.com/news/beatles-white-album-tracklisting

im psyched for the 50th Anniversary White Album release! remastered complete Esher Demos! 3 discs of outtakes! many previously unreleased! there is a take of "Long, Long, Long" that is 20 takes away from the final, ive been dying for any outtakes at all of that track for years...

my top songs atm are mostly George songs. "Only a Northern Song", "Blue Jay Way", and especially "Long, Long Long". when i was young the song was too quiet, i thought it was boring, skipped it sometimes. then one day i heard it at the end of a long day with friends, and the song was turned up so that the quiet parts could all be heard and the loud bits were really epic. it was amazing. it was like hearing Radiohead for the first time or something. it was a spiritual experience.

it's just an incredible song. kind of graceful and poetic and mystical. very unlike anything else they have done. i mean the ending alone, with the noise rock drone and atonal wailing, is some of the sickest stuff the Beatles ever did, and it was just something they made up at the very end of one of the takes. some of Yoko's influence here (as across the WA), this is the start of the era where the Beatles became a secret part time krautrock noise band. supposedly George wrote "Long, Long, Long" while playing around w Bob Dylan's chord changes, and def it has that kind of gypsy shuffleto it. what a lovely song.
 
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lock2k

Banned
My top 3:

1. Eleanor Rigby
2. I Want You
3. I Am the Walrus

My list could be completely different tomorrow lol
 

Xisiqomelir

Member
Ayy, this guy's bottom half of the list is pretty out there as well. I would put many songs below Good Day Sunshine, and I have a particular fondness for Every Little Thing
 

-hal-

Member
The problem with lists like this, especially when considering their later albums, is that you end up plucking at pieces. It's like sectioning off a master painting and critiquing each square.

Someone mentioned Wild Honey Pie earlier, and it's really a throwaway transition piece that segues brilliantly into The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, which tumbles quite nicely into While My Guitar Gently Weeps. They should be inseparable as that is how they were presented.
 
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