Ten From the Beatles: Their Best Singles
Before the Beatles pretty much single-handedly made the album the preferred rock music format, popular music was all about the 45 RPM single. From the early jukebox days when the pioneers of rock and roll created a new record buying demographic by popularizing a form of music altogether different from what their parents were listening to, records became the currency whereby teenagers and young adults earned a post-war voice. It wasn’t weapons and ammunition that brought about a cultural revolution in the United States. It was a seven-inch disc under a phonograph needle.
These same singles, from Little Richard and Elvis, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent, made their way across the Atlantic and onto pirate radio stations where they reached the ears of many young lads in Liverpool. Some of these boys in their late teen years sat listening and waiting for their favorite songs to come across the airwaves so they could learn rudimentary versions on their guitars. Eventually, they began to acquire records of their own using their pocket money, or perhaps just as often by nicking them from the local shops.
On October 5, 1962, four such lads released their own first real single as a proper band with a recording contract. The Beatles dropped “Love Me Do” b/w “P.S. I Love You” that day and saw it reach #17 in the homeland. On January 11 the next year, they unleashed “Please Please Me” b/w “Ask Me Why,” which their producer George Martin had correctly predicted would be their first number one. And so it was.
Over the course of just eight short years, the Fab Four would officially release 22 singles, often separate from the tracks contained on their LPs to provide maximum value to the record buying public. As staggering as that number seems now (44 total songs in 8 years would be considered aggressive by today’s standards – and that doesn’t even consider a huge number of album tracks), the true miracle remains the staggering quality of each one of them.
Those first two singles, despite their historical importance, and the fact that they are both excellent records, don’t make a dent in my list of The Beatles Ten Best Singles. In fact, among the songs released in this format but missing from the following you will find the likes of “Let it Be,” “Help!,” and “I Feel Fine.” You won’t even find “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which while it was staggeringly popular and instrumental to their success in the states, isn’t quite strong enough as a whole (backed with “This Boy”) to make it to my top ten.
As is often the case with the Beatles, what doesn’t make the list shows how incredible they truly were. So, let the arguments begin. Here are, in my humble estimation, the Ten Best Beatles Singles. (I considered only UK releases made while the group was together, starting with “Love Me Do” and ending with “Let it Be” in March 1970.)
10. Hello, Goodbye b/w I am the Walrus (11/24/67)
A surprising choice for the list, to be sure. Certainly “Let it Be” (which doesn’t appear on this list) is a better track than “Hello Goodbye.” For crafting pure pop confection, you can hardly do better than Paul McCartney, but it is the B side that elevates this single. “I am the Walrus” is clearly the stronger song, but lost out for preferred status due to the obvious commercial appeal of its A side. There’s nothing wrong with “Hello Goodbye,” but it is twee at best next to Lennon’s channeling of Lewis Carroll. “Walrus” is best experienced within the “Magical Mystery Tour” film, the surreal visuals adding further to the thick sound collage created by the author’s acid-laden mind and executed with aplomb by George Martin. And for the record, it is “Goo-goo-ga’joob.” Save the “coo-coo-ca-choos” for Mrs. Robinson, please.
9. “Can’t Buy Me Love” b/w “You Can’t Do That” (3/20/64)
A Beatles song without any harmony vocals on one side, bitterness from Lennon on the other. Add delightfully sloppy guitar solos (by George and John respectively) on both and you have quite a record. There’s not much to the lyric of “Can’t Buy Me Love,” (“diamond ring” – really?) but the recording is so superb it doesn’t matter. It is Paul’s first major statement on a Beatles single, and his unofficial debut is pure pop confection. Imagine what it must have been like to listeners in 1964 when they flipped it over and heard that angry Rickenbacker and incessant cowbell, not to mention John’s threatening vocal. “You Can’t Do That” remains one of my favorite “early” Beatles tracks right down to John’s dirty solo, his first on a Beatles record. For my money, this was their first great single when taking into consideration both sides, though #5 (below) has the much stronger A side.
8. “Get Back” b/w “Don’t Let Me Down” (4/11/69)
Once again, Paul gets the A side for being more commercial, and there is nothing wrong with “Get Back.” It’s a great number. But the powerhouse here is Lennon’s flip side, the exquisite “Don’t Let Me Down.” Gun to my head, this is probably my favorite Beatles track, and the rooftop performance of the song is jaw-droppingly incredible. No matter what else may have been brewing at the time, when those four guys (plus Billy Preston of course) played together, they were without peer. The playing and the singing are sublime, and this is one time when Lennon’s song definitely should have trumped his partner’s for preeminence.
7. “Ticket to Ride” b/w “Yes it is” (4/9/1965)
I should rank this one higher because “Ticket to Ride” is one of my favorite Beatles tracks. From the great guitar work to Ringo’s groundbreaking drumming, this is the single where the group begins to take major strides by significantly improving on their sound with each release. The band from this point would make concerted efforts to move forward with their releases and would not stop stepping up their innovation until 1968. Lennon called “Ticket to Ride” the first “heavy metal record.” That’s more than a bit of a stretch, but it is a heavy song, and probably their second-best number to date after the exquisite “She Loves You.” This is a song that never gets old, and truly still sounds contemporary over fifty years later. It is a rare double Lennon single, as he also contributes the beautiful “Yes It Is,” a track he sadly dismissed as nothing more than a rewrite of “This Boy.” His latter-day assessments, particularly from the 1980 Playboy interviews, tend toward dismissal of much of his work, and often a little context might have helped him judge them more fairly. Along with his remarks about “And Your Bird Can Sing,” this B-side is one of the author’s later most harshly (and incorrectly) dismissed compositions. This is weighty stuff, the singer obviously unable to overcome the loss of his dead lover. It’s hard enough to compete with the living. This girl must measure up to the deceased – and no matter what she does, she is not going to be able to overcome the singer’s “pride.” This is the best singing the three of them have done to date, and it rounds out a song that deserves more recognition than it customarily is assigned – and well more than its dismissive author credited it.
6. “We Can Work it Out” b/w “Day Tripper” (12/3/1965)
The conventional wisdom has Paul being the optimistic one on the verses contrasted with John’s pessimism on the bridges (“Life is very short” are the words always cited) of “We Can Work it Out.” But have you really listened to the lyrics of this absolutely gorgeous song closely? Paul’s verses actually sound more threatening than John’s lyrics to me, substantially saying that the girl must kowtow to him if they are going to “work it out.” It is the cheeriest sounding “my way or the highway” ever to appear on a pop record. And yes, Lennon chimes in with “Life is very short” but he admonishes the girl that “there’s no time for fussing and fighting.” So many have pointed out the differences in the authors’ styles as they are made manifest by this song, but I think they have largely missed the boat (or at the very least just heard the major-minor difference in the two sections and not really listened to the words). Paul is borderline misogynistic here, whereas John sounds like he has a true mind to “work it out” at all costs. All the collaboration talk also misses a major point about the construction of the song. I was surprised to learn recently that it was George who suggested the breakdown to waltz tempo in the bridges and at the end of the song. That ornamentation makes the song even better, and the result is a phenomenal record. Flipping it over, you get the riff driven “Day Tripper.” It rocks along, and is a better “evil woman” song than “Drive My Car.” An honest to goodness double A-side.
5. “She Loves You” b/w “I’ll Get You” (8/23/1963)
There is nothing wrong with “I’ll Get You,” and there is nothing that remarkable about it either. It’s just that it doesn’t matter. The B-side could be blank because the A-Side is one of the finest singles anyone ever released. “She Loves You” is the song that really put the Beatles on the map, and from the opening tom rolls all the way through to the sixth chord at the end, the song is without peer. Ringo swings, John sings a ferocious lead vocal he would seldom better, Paul and George’s backing vocals are thrilling, with the latter’s guitar fills coming in all the right places, and the “yeah, yeah, yeahs” are as infectious as they were unique at the time. You could take an entire course on how to make a rock and roll record, but your time and money would be better spent on this single. And, you would learn more too.
4. “Something” b/w “Come Together” (10/31/96)
After having “All Things Must Pass” mostly ignored during the “Get Back” sessions (unbelievable), George Harrison pulled all his good material and left the lightweight “For You Blue” and the nominal song fragment “I Me Mine” for the project. It seems unfathomable that so many great songs were dismissed by John and Paul, but thankfully come summer of 1969 with John laid up following a car accident, there was a willingness to consider what the band’s guitarist was offering. Ultimately neither “Something” nor “Here Comes the Sun” has any contribution from Lennon, who mostly ignored Harrison’s songs in 1968-1969. Fortunately Paul was not so dismissive this time. “Something” is an incredible achievement, and a well deserving first (and only) time George would get a Beatles A-side. Starting with a lyric cribbed from Apple label signee James Taylor, the song developed into a true classic with some innovative bass playing from Paul and a perfect solo from the author. Perhaps the best part of the song Frank Sinatra called “the best love song of the past 50 years,” is the vocals. Happily, thanks to some enterprising folks and the “Beatles Rock Band” video game, we can have a listen at the isolated vocal track, and it is a thing of beauty. Listen to it here: https://ok.ru/video/33694353960. This is the best singing of George’s life, and Paul’s harmony is exquisite. But the real treat is hearing McCartney sing along to the solo, something buried in the mix and beyond our ears until now. It is validation for George’s playing, and the gorgeous blend of the voices of these two is as sublime a thing as I have ever heard. (Thankfully George decided against “attracts me like a pomegranate.”) As if this perfection wasn’t enough, on the flip is one of the greatest collaborative efforts of the band’s career. What started out as a campaign song for Timothy Leary ended up as one of the best Beatle records ever. John had the words, but the band put together an arrangement that along with being timeless also blows away anything anyone else was doing in 1969. Ringo’s innovative drumming (and drum sound) is a masterclass in the instrument. The bass work, the soloing… everything is perfect. And while some have suggested that each verse is about one of the four Beatles, the fact is the lyrics do not matter. Rarely was any band as good as the Beatles, but with “Come Together,” they exceeded even themselves. For pure quality of sound, it may be the best thing they ever put on record, and I never get tired of it.
3. “Hey Jude” b/w “Revolution” (8/30/1968)
John Lennon, having long grown tired of mostly keeping quiet about current events, wrote “Revolution” to make a statement. For most of the life of the creation of song, however, he wasn’t entire sure what that statement would be. The familiar “fast” version most everyone would recognize was not the original take. For that, you must check out side four of the White Album, track one, where you will find “Revolution 1.” The slower, more laid-back recording you find there was the author’s original vision, and included the infamous “count me out, in” lyric. He wanted it as a single, but the others felt it wasn’t right for the singles market, so they went back to the drawing board, broke the EMI studio rules, and created a guitar sound that supposedly would have resulted in the firing of everyone involved had it been found out. The results certainly justify any defiance. This remains as solid a piece of rock and roll as the band ever did, and the addition of the electric piano played by session man extraordinaire Nicky Hopkins completed a perfect recording. (Check out “Girl from Mill Valley” on “Beck-Ola” – another of my favorite albums btw – for some of Hopkins’ best work.) And when listening to “Revolution,” make sure you get your hands on the mono version for the gut-punch sound Lennon wanted (the stereo version sounds awful) – the sound that would have made a perfect A-side had Paul not brought in his master-work at the same time. What more can be said about “Hey Jude?” Staying nine weeks at #1 in the US, the song headlined the Beatles’ longest stay atop the charts stateside, an anthemic statement of positive motivation so perfectly crafted it leaves the listener wanting more even after over seven minutes of running time. McCartney would approach greatness many times in the subsequent decades, but he would never equal this classic.
2. “Paperback Writer” b/w “Rain” (6/10/1966)
What an embarrassment of riches! How I would love to have been around in the summer of 1966 when this monumental single dropped. Oozing with craftsmanship, innovation and a sound unlike anything the band had released to date, look no further than this record to find the Beatles at the height of their power. “Paperback Writer” has a story that doesn’t really go anywhere. The first non-love song released as a single by the band, the singer apparently wants to write trashy paperback novels and already has a thousand some-odd pages about a man named Lear. That’s about all there is to it, but the words scan well and sound good together, so when that acapella intro leaps out of the speakers, what the voices are saying does not matter at all. A fantastic guitar riff then cuts through as the vocals start to fade and the rocking begins. And when it seems things couldn’t possibly be more thrilling, McCartney’s groundbreaking bass sound (courtesy of his newly acquired Rickenbacker and an innovative speaker-as-a-mike arrangement) hits the listener with a punch and we are off to the races. A fairly basic three chord blues-based number, some have dismissed the track as lightweight and even simplistic, but that school of thought ignores the reason we have music to begin with. It sounds so, so good, and you simply cannot sit still when the song plays. As a rock and roll single, the Beatles rarely bettered the overall feel of this stunning achievement. They did, however, at least match it – look no further than the B-side. The dreamy tape manipulation, the bass and lead guitar with similar sound and punch, the backwards vocals near the end… “Rain” is every bit the quality of its a-side, and lyrically it stands superior to it, taking the psychedelia of the previous year’s “The Word” to a higher level and meaning before everyone else caught on the next year and reduced the sentiment to platitudes. (The Beatles were guilty of this too – “All You Need is Love” is downright pedestrian and amateurish next to “Rain” and “The Word.”) This summer 1966 single may be my favorite record the group made, and it is certainly their most cohesive statement to date. Little did the world know they would soon begin work on something that would exceed even this greatness.
1. “Penny Lane” b/w “Strawberry Fields Forever” (2/17/1967)
How unfathomable that this triumph of songwriting, inventiveness and studio mastery failed to reach #1 in the UK! John Lennon appears first to have tried his hand at a “growing up/life retrospective” during the Rubber Soul sessions with “In My Life.” While the lyrics eventually became a more universal theme, they began as memories of specific places and events from his childhood. That development undoubtedly improved the song, but it also left the idea open to be revisited. Lennon did so from Spain in 1966 where he was filming “How I Won the War,” creating the basic structure and lyrics for what would become one of his finest achievements, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The song began as an acoustic demo sung by John to George Martin later that year. Strawberry Field was an orphanage near Mindips where John grew up and stood in his mind as a symbol for personal reflection, his time spent in the gardens resulting in the creation of an introspective more than a retrospective summation.
In considering the lyrics, we find what may be the very best the author ever penned. “Let me take you down” he sings, rather than taking us “back” or “there,” an interesting choice that has always caught my ear. It is true that where John is taking us “nothing is real,” but there is also “nothing to get hung about.” I see the chorus as an appeal to everyone to get into his or her own “Strawberry Fields” and examine, even confront his or her own thoughts and perspectives. The thoughts of one’s mind are wholly his own, and it is a place where not only nothing is real, but nothing is wrong and nothing is public. “Living is easy with eyes closed,” but we can do more by opening them up! In the verses, Lennon offers insight into his own psyche, his struggle between madness and genius being a key theme: “No one, I think, is in my tree. I mean it must be high or low.” But after getting deep into himself, he returns with the admission that he remains uncertain in the final verse, a selection where the true lyrics seem to be deciphered in any number of ways by different people, giving shades of meaning that can fall anywhere on one’s own roadmap as needed. I can’t tell you for sure what the words are, but I still think they may be the best Lennon ever wrote. Even punctuating them is impossible…
Always, no, sometimes think it's me
(or is it “Always know sometimes think it’s me?”)
But you know I know when it's a dream
I think, er, no, I mean, er, yes, but it's all wrong
(Or is it “I think I know I mean a ‘yes’ but it’s all wrong?”)
That is I think I disagree
Then there is the production of the song itself. The opening melody on the mellotron (check out Sir Paul’s demonstration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUcfB5Whp4I), perfectly sets the mood for John’s song. Most Beatles fans know the story of the two versions – one slower and more plaintive, the other faster and more psychedelic with backwards cymbals and all sorts of horns. John wanted both versions, so George Martin sped up the former and slowed down the latter, leaving the two compositions in approximately the same key by “happy accident,” and stitched them together to create the magnum opus we know and love. You can dig up many different versions of this song on the web – the original demo, each of the combined versions in their entirety and original keys, etc. But as usual, the released version remains definitive. For my money, this is the Beatles at their very best – John’s lyric and chord structure, Ringo’s incredible drumming, particularly in the coda, Paul’s mellotron, and George’s guitar and Indian influence (the critical connecting slide on the swarmandal).
Paul’s “Penny Lane” remains the most deceptively complex piece of music he ever wrote. It seems so simple on the surface, but dismissing this composition as a piece of pop-fluff only reinforces its genius. The lyrics seem to be a stream of consciousness painting and nothing more, but in reality they create a multifaceted canvas that shows far more than just a simple memory book. Yes, it is wanderlust to childhood memories at its finest, but it is also social commentary, escapism and bawdy humor at the same time. This is as fine a lyric as McCartney ever wrote, the perfect mix of whimsy masking serious social commentary.
The music that supports the lyric, on the other hand, isn’t just great. It is otherworldly. Much of the feel of the song is set in the way McCartney deftly shifts the key around to create the mood. Key changes in popular music are most often used to add interest – more times than not, they signal the need to lift a song that on its own isn’t good enough to pull its own weight. I’d go so far as to say that nine of ten key changes you hear are cheap tricks to overcome low quality. Chalk it up to “not knowing any better” or to their being musical prodigies, the Beatles never once used the key change as a crutch. “Penny Lane” uses a straight key change before the last chorus that brightens the mood, creating an exuberant feeling worthy of the story at hand. But it is the modulation between the verses (key of B) and the chorus (key of A) that demonstrates genius on an entirely different level.
Starting with a walking bass and gorgeous melody in B, Paul creates the sunny landscape of “Penny Lane,” only to darken the mood by switching to Bm7. The sun becomes rain, and the warm becomes cold. This is followed by a sequence of descending chords (G#m7-Gmaj7-F#sus4-F# on “all the people that come and go…”) that create anticipation of what may come next. Rather than showing his hand, Paul goes immediately into a second verse in B, repeating the structure. This time when the listener arrives at the descending sequence it seems more comfortable because we have heard it before – and then the magic happens. McCartney takes us down one more step to E major, a common chord between the keys of B and A, so that he can seamlessly sing the chorus in A. The song modulates DOWNWARD, but rather than creating a darkening moodiness, the structure of the melody instead LIFTS the song. As the chorus completes (“meanwhile back”) a transition F# chord appears, and we modulate back up to B. Downward modulations are so rare in pop music, I struggle to find other examples. And the only writer as adept as McCartney at pulling off these tricks so seamlessly is Brian Wilson. But for all his genius, and he had genius and to spare, even Wilson never rose to the heights of Paul’s “Penny Lane.” For all of McCartney’s accomplishments, nothing exceeds the perfect blend of lyric and musical tapestry that is “Penny Lane.”
Alongside Wilson’s own “Good Vibrations,” Paul’s masterpiece stands as the perfect pop composition and recording. When coupled with Lennon’s stunning accomplishment on the flip side, you have the finest single anyone ever released, and the competition really isn’t even close. This is the perfect record. Two sides of enormous complexity that never comes off as highbrow, approachable lyrics that at the same time present challenge and intricacy, and execution from a band at the apex of its powers.
These same singles, from Little Richard and Elvis, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent, made their way across the Atlantic and onto pirate radio stations where they reached the ears of many young lads in Liverpool. Some of these boys in their late teen years sat listening and waiting for their favorite songs to come across the airwaves so they could learn rudimentary versions on their guitars. Eventually, they began to acquire records of their own using their pocket money, or perhaps just as often by nicking them from the local shops.
On October 5, 1962, four such lads released their own first real single as a proper band with a recording contract. The Beatles dropped “Love Me Do” b/w “P.S. I Love You” that day and saw it reach #17 in the homeland. On January 11 the next year, they unleashed “Please Please Me” b/w “Ask Me Why,” which their producer George Martin had correctly predicted would be their first number one. And so it was.
Over the course of just eight short years, the Fab Four would officially release 22 singles, often separate from the tracks contained on their LPs to provide maximum value to the record buying public. As staggering as that number seems now (44 total songs in 8 years would be considered aggressive by today’s standards – and that doesn’t even consider a huge number of album tracks), the true miracle remains the staggering quality of each one of them.
Those first two singles, despite their historical importance, and the fact that they are both excellent records, don’t make a dent in my list of The Beatles Ten Best Singles. In fact, among the songs released in this format but missing from the following you will find the likes of “Let it Be,” “Help!,” and “I Feel Fine.” You won’t even find “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which while it was staggeringly popular and instrumental to their success in the states, isn’t quite strong enough as a whole (backed with “This Boy”) to make it to my top ten.
As is often the case with the Beatles, what doesn’t make the list shows how incredible they truly were. So, let the arguments begin. Here are, in my humble estimation, the Ten Best Beatles Singles. (I considered only UK releases made while the group was together, starting with “Love Me Do” and ending with “Let it Be” in March 1970.)
10. Hello, Goodbye b/w I am the Walrus (11/24/67)
A surprising choice for the list, to be sure. Certainly “Let it Be” (which doesn’t appear on this list) is a better track than “Hello Goodbye.” For crafting pure pop confection, you can hardly do better than Paul McCartney, but it is the B side that elevates this single. “I am the Walrus” is clearly the stronger song, but lost out for preferred status due to the obvious commercial appeal of its A side. There’s nothing wrong with “Hello Goodbye,” but it is twee at best next to Lennon’s channeling of Lewis Carroll. “Walrus” is best experienced within the “Magical Mystery Tour” film, the surreal visuals adding further to the thick sound collage created by the author’s acid-laden mind and executed with aplomb by George Martin. And for the record, it is “Goo-goo-ga’joob.” Save the “coo-coo-ca-choos” for Mrs. Robinson, please.
9. “Can’t Buy Me Love” b/w “You Can’t Do That” (3/20/64)
A Beatles song without any harmony vocals on one side, bitterness from Lennon on the other. Add delightfully sloppy guitar solos (by George and John respectively) on both and you have quite a record. There’s not much to the lyric of “Can’t Buy Me Love,” (“diamond ring” – really?) but the recording is so superb it doesn’t matter. It is Paul’s first major statement on a Beatles single, and his unofficial debut is pure pop confection. Imagine what it must have been like to listeners in 1964 when they flipped it over and heard that angry Rickenbacker and incessant cowbell, not to mention John’s threatening vocal. “You Can’t Do That” remains one of my favorite “early” Beatles tracks right down to John’s dirty solo, his first on a Beatles record. For my money, this was their first great single when taking into consideration both sides, though #5 (below) has the much stronger A side.
8. “Get Back” b/w “Don’t Let Me Down” (4/11/69)
Once again, Paul gets the A side for being more commercial, and there is nothing wrong with “Get Back.” It’s a great number. But the powerhouse here is Lennon’s flip side, the exquisite “Don’t Let Me Down.” Gun to my head, this is probably my favorite Beatles track, and the rooftop performance of the song is jaw-droppingly incredible. No matter what else may have been brewing at the time, when those four guys (plus Billy Preston of course) played together, they were without peer. The playing and the singing are sublime, and this is one time when Lennon’s song definitely should have trumped his partner’s for preeminence.
7. “Ticket to Ride” b/w “Yes it is” (4/9/1965)
I should rank this one higher because “Ticket to Ride” is one of my favorite Beatles tracks. From the great guitar work to Ringo’s groundbreaking drumming, this is the single where the group begins to take major strides by significantly improving on their sound with each release. The band from this point would make concerted efforts to move forward with their releases and would not stop stepping up their innovation until 1968. Lennon called “Ticket to Ride” the first “heavy metal record.” That’s more than a bit of a stretch, but it is a heavy song, and probably their second-best number to date after the exquisite “She Loves You.” This is a song that never gets old, and truly still sounds contemporary over fifty years later. It is a rare double Lennon single, as he also contributes the beautiful “Yes It Is,” a track he sadly dismissed as nothing more than a rewrite of “This Boy.” His latter-day assessments, particularly from the 1980 Playboy interviews, tend toward dismissal of much of his work, and often a little context might have helped him judge them more fairly. Along with his remarks about “And Your Bird Can Sing,” this B-side is one of the author’s later most harshly (and incorrectly) dismissed compositions. This is weighty stuff, the singer obviously unable to overcome the loss of his dead lover. It’s hard enough to compete with the living. This girl must measure up to the deceased – and no matter what she does, she is not going to be able to overcome the singer’s “pride.” This is the best singing the three of them have done to date, and it rounds out a song that deserves more recognition than it customarily is assigned – and well more than its dismissive author credited it.
6. “We Can Work it Out” b/w “Day Tripper” (12/3/1965)
The conventional wisdom has Paul being the optimistic one on the verses contrasted with John’s pessimism on the bridges (“Life is very short” are the words always cited) of “We Can Work it Out.” But have you really listened to the lyrics of this absolutely gorgeous song closely? Paul’s verses actually sound more threatening than John’s lyrics to me, substantially saying that the girl must kowtow to him if they are going to “work it out.” It is the cheeriest sounding “my way or the highway” ever to appear on a pop record. And yes, Lennon chimes in with “Life is very short” but he admonishes the girl that “there’s no time for fussing and fighting.” So many have pointed out the differences in the authors’ styles as they are made manifest by this song, but I think they have largely missed the boat (or at the very least just heard the major-minor difference in the two sections and not really listened to the words). Paul is borderline misogynistic here, whereas John sounds like he has a true mind to “work it out” at all costs. All the collaboration talk also misses a major point about the construction of the song. I was surprised to learn recently that it was George who suggested the breakdown to waltz tempo in the bridges and at the end of the song. That ornamentation makes the song even better, and the result is a phenomenal record. Flipping it over, you get the riff driven “Day Tripper.” It rocks along, and is a better “evil woman” song than “Drive My Car.” An honest to goodness double A-side.
5. “She Loves You” b/w “I’ll Get You” (8/23/1963)
There is nothing wrong with “I’ll Get You,” and there is nothing that remarkable about it either. It’s just that it doesn’t matter. The B-side could be blank because the A-Side is one of the finest singles anyone ever released. “She Loves You” is the song that really put the Beatles on the map, and from the opening tom rolls all the way through to the sixth chord at the end, the song is without peer. Ringo swings, John sings a ferocious lead vocal he would seldom better, Paul and George’s backing vocals are thrilling, with the latter’s guitar fills coming in all the right places, and the “yeah, yeah, yeahs” are as infectious as they were unique at the time. You could take an entire course on how to make a rock and roll record, but your time and money would be better spent on this single. And, you would learn more too.
4. “Something” b/w “Come Together” (10/31/96)
After having “All Things Must Pass” mostly ignored during the “Get Back” sessions (unbelievable), George Harrison pulled all his good material and left the lightweight “For You Blue” and the nominal song fragment “I Me Mine” for the project. It seems unfathomable that so many great songs were dismissed by John and Paul, but thankfully come summer of 1969 with John laid up following a car accident, there was a willingness to consider what the band’s guitarist was offering. Ultimately neither “Something” nor “Here Comes the Sun” has any contribution from Lennon, who mostly ignored Harrison’s songs in 1968-1969. Fortunately Paul was not so dismissive this time. “Something” is an incredible achievement, and a well deserving first (and only) time George would get a Beatles A-side. Starting with a lyric cribbed from Apple label signee James Taylor, the song developed into a true classic with some innovative bass playing from Paul and a perfect solo from the author. Perhaps the best part of the song Frank Sinatra called “the best love song of the past 50 years,” is the vocals. Happily, thanks to some enterprising folks and the “Beatles Rock Band” video game, we can have a listen at the isolated vocal track, and it is a thing of beauty. Listen to it here: https://ok.ru/video/33694353960. This is the best singing of George’s life, and Paul’s harmony is exquisite. But the real treat is hearing McCartney sing along to the solo, something buried in the mix and beyond our ears until now. It is validation for George’s playing, and the gorgeous blend of the voices of these two is as sublime a thing as I have ever heard. (Thankfully George decided against “attracts me like a pomegranate.”) As if this perfection wasn’t enough, on the flip is one of the greatest collaborative efforts of the band’s career. What started out as a campaign song for Timothy Leary ended up as one of the best Beatle records ever. John had the words, but the band put together an arrangement that along with being timeless also blows away anything anyone else was doing in 1969. Ringo’s innovative drumming (and drum sound) is a masterclass in the instrument. The bass work, the soloing… everything is perfect. And while some have suggested that each verse is about one of the four Beatles, the fact is the lyrics do not matter. Rarely was any band as good as the Beatles, but with “Come Together,” they exceeded even themselves. For pure quality of sound, it may be the best thing they ever put on record, and I never get tired of it.
3. “Hey Jude” b/w “Revolution” (8/30/1968)
John Lennon, having long grown tired of mostly keeping quiet about current events, wrote “Revolution” to make a statement. For most of the life of the creation of song, however, he wasn’t entire sure what that statement would be. The familiar “fast” version most everyone would recognize was not the original take. For that, you must check out side four of the White Album, track one, where you will find “Revolution 1.” The slower, more laid-back recording you find there was the author’s original vision, and included the infamous “count me out, in” lyric. He wanted it as a single, but the others felt it wasn’t right for the singles market, so they went back to the drawing board, broke the EMI studio rules, and created a guitar sound that supposedly would have resulted in the firing of everyone involved had it been found out. The results certainly justify any defiance. This remains as solid a piece of rock and roll as the band ever did, and the addition of the electric piano played by session man extraordinaire Nicky Hopkins completed a perfect recording. (Check out “Girl from Mill Valley” on “Beck-Ola” – another of my favorite albums btw – for some of Hopkins’ best work.) And when listening to “Revolution,” make sure you get your hands on the mono version for the gut-punch sound Lennon wanted (the stereo version sounds awful) – the sound that would have made a perfect A-side had Paul not brought in his master-work at the same time. What more can be said about “Hey Jude?” Staying nine weeks at #1 in the US, the song headlined the Beatles’ longest stay atop the charts stateside, an anthemic statement of positive motivation so perfectly crafted it leaves the listener wanting more even after over seven minutes of running time. McCartney would approach greatness many times in the subsequent decades, but he would never equal this classic.
2. “Paperback Writer” b/w “Rain” (6/10/1966)
What an embarrassment of riches! How I would love to have been around in the summer of 1966 when this monumental single dropped. Oozing with craftsmanship, innovation and a sound unlike anything the band had released to date, look no further than this record to find the Beatles at the height of their power. “Paperback Writer” has a story that doesn’t really go anywhere. The first non-love song released as a single by the band, the singer apparently wants to write trashy paperback novels and already has a thousand some-odd pages about a man named Lear. That’s about all there is to it, but the words scan well and sound good together, so when that acapella intro leaps out of the speakers, what the voices are saying does not matter at all. A fantastic guitar riff then cuts through as the vocals start to fade and the rocking begins. And when it seems things couldn’t possibly be more thrilling, McCartney’s groundbreaking bass sound (courtesy of his newly acquired Rickenbacker and an innovative speaker-as-a-mike arrangement) hits the listener with a punch and we are off to the races. A fairly basic three chord blues-based number, some have dismissed the track as lightweight and even simplistic, but that school of thought ignores the reason we have music to begin with. It sounds so, so good, and you simply cannot sit still when the song plays. As a rock and roll single, the Beatles rarely bettered the overall feel of this stunning achievement. They did, however, at least match it – look no further than the B-side. The dreamy tape manipulation, the bass and lead guitar with similar sound and punch, the backwards vocals near the end… “Rain” is every bit the quality of its a-side, and lyrically it stands superior to it, taking the psychedelia of the previous year’s “The Word” to a higher level and meaning before everyone else caught on the next year and reduced the sentiment to platitudes. (The Beatles were guilty of this too – “All You Need is Love” is downright pedestrian and amateurish next to “Rain” and “The Word.”) This summer 1966 single may be my favorite record the group made, and it is certainly their most cohesive statement to date. Little did the world know they would soon begin work on something that would exceed even this greatness.
1. “Penny Lane” b/w “Strawberry Fields Forever” (2/17/1967)
How unfathomable that this triumph of songwriting, inventiveness and studio mastery failed to reach #1 in the UK! John Lennon appears first to have tried his hand at a “growing up/life retrospective” during the Rubber Soul sessions with “In My Life.” While the lyrics eventually became a more universal theme, they began as memories of specific places and events from his childhood. That development undoubtedly improved the song, but it also left the idea open to be revisited. Lennon did so from Spain in 1966 where he was filming “How I Won the War,” creating the basic structure and lyrics for what would become one of his finest achievements, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The song began as an acoustic demo sung by John to George Martin later that year. Strawberry Field was an orphanage near Mindips where John grew up and stood in his mind as a symbol for personal reflection, his time spent in the gardens resulting in the creation of an introspective more than a retrospective summation.
In considering the lyrics, we find what may be the very best the author ever penned. “Let me take you down” he sings, rather than taking us “back” or “there,” an interesting choice that has always caught my ear. It is true that where John is taking us “nothing is real,” but there is also “nothing to get hung about.” I see the chorus as an appeal to everyone to get into his or her own “Strawberry Fields” and examine, even confront his or her own thoughts and perspectives. The thoughts of one’s mind are wholly his own, and it is a place where not only nothing is real, but nothing is wrong and nothing is public. “Living is easy with eyes closed,” but we can do more by opening them up! In the verses, Lennon offers insight into his own psyche, his struggle between madness and genius being a key theme: “No one, I think, is in my tree. I mean it must be high or low.” But after getting deep into himself, he returns with the admission that he remains uncertain in the final verse, a selection where the true lyrics seem to be deciphered in any number of ways by different people, giving shades of meaning that can fall anywhere on one’s own roadmap as needed. I can’t tell you for sure what the words are, but I still think they may be the best Lennon ever wrote. Even punctuating them is impossible…
Always, no, sometimes think it's me
(or is it “Always know sometimes think it’s me?”)
But you know I know when it's a dream
I think, er, no, I mean, er, yes, but it's all wrong
(Or is it “I think I know I mean a ‘yes’ but it’s all wrong?”)
That is I think I disagree
Then there is the production of the song itself. The opening melody on the mellotron (check out Sir Paul’s demonstration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUcfB5Whp4I), perfectly sets the mood for John’s song. Most Beatles fans know the story of the two versions – one slower and more plaintive, the other faster and more psychedelic with backwards cymbals and all sorts of horns. John wanted both versions, so George Martin sped up the former and slowed down the latter, leaving the two compositions in approximately the same key by “happy accident,” and stitched them together to create the magnum opus we know and love. You can dig up many different versions of this song on the web – the original demo, each of the combined versions in their entirety and original keys, etc. But as usual, the released version remains definitive. For my money, this is the Beatles at their very best – John’s lyric and chord structure, Ringo’s incredible drumming, particularly in the coda, Paul’s mellotron, and George’s guitar and Indian influence (the critical connecting slide on the swarmandal).
Paul’s “Penny Lane” remains the most deceptively complex piece of music he ever wrote. It seems so simple on the surface, but dismissing this composition as a piece of pop-fluff only reinforces its genius. The lyrics seem to be a stream of consciousness painting and nothing more, but in reality they create a multifaceted canvas that shows far more than just a simple memory book. Yes, it is wanderlust to childhood memories at its finest, but it is also social commentary, escapism and bawdy humor at the same time. This is as fine a lyric as McCartney ever wrote, the perfect mix of whimsy masking serious social commentary.
The music that supports the lyric, on the other hand, isn’t just great. It is otherworldly. Much of the feel of the song is set in the way McCartney deftly shifts the key around to create the mood. Key changes in popular music are most often used to add interest – more times than not, they signal the need to lift a song that on its own isn’t good enough to pull its own weight. I’d go so far as to say that nine of ten key changes you hear are cheap tricks to overcome low quality. Chalk it up to “not knowing any better” or to their being musical prodigies, the Beatles never once used the key change as a crutch. “Penny Lane” uses a straight key change before the last chorus that brightens the mood, creating an exuberant feeling worthy of the story at hand. But it is the modulation between the verses (key of B) and the chorus (key of A) that demonstrates genius on an entirely different level.
Starting with a walking bass and gorgeous melody in B, Paul creates the sunny landscape of “Penny Lane,” only to darken the mood by switching to Bm7. The sun becomes rain, and the warm becomes cold. This is followed by a sequence of descending chords (G#m7-Gmaj7-F#sus4-F# on “all the people that come and go…”) that create anticipation of what may come next. Rather than showing his hand, Paul goes immediately into a second verse in B, repeating the structure. This time when the listener arrives at the descending sequence it seems more comfortable because we have heard it before – and then the magic happens. McCartney takes us down one more step to E major, a common chord between the keys of B and A, so that he can seamlessly sing the chorus in A. The song modulates DOWNWARD, but rather than creating a darkening moodiness, the structure of the melody instead LIFTS the song. As the chorus completes (“meanwhile back”) a transition F# chord appears, and we modulate back up to B. Downward modulations are so rare in pop music, I struggle to find other examples. And the only writer as adept as McCartney at pulling off these tricks so seamlessly is Brian Wilson. But for all his genius, and he had genius and to spare, even Wilson never rose to the heights of Paul’s “Penny Lane.” For all of McCartney’s accomplishments, nothing exceeds the perfect blend of lyric and musical tapestry that is “Penny Lane.”
Alongside Wilson’s own “Good Vibrations,” Paul’s masterpiece stands as the perfect pop composition and recording. When coupled with Lennon’s stunning accomplishment on the flip side, you have the finest single anyone ever released, and the competition really isn’t even close. This is the perfect record. Two sides of enormous complexity that never comes off as highbrow, approachable lyrics that at the same time present challenge and intricacy, and execution from a band at the apex of its powers.
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
©2015-2020 Joshua V. Best
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