Rolling Stone magazine has a list of hundred greatest Beatles songs. Here's my top ten (based on the songs I most want to hear at any given moment):
1. Norwegian Wood
2. Got to Get You into My Life
3. Across the Universe
4. Hard Day's Night
5. Polythene Pam
6. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
7. Get Back
8. Day in the Life
9. She Came in through the Bathroom Window
10. Helter Skelter
The songs that came closest to making the list were "Come Together," "Blackbird," "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds," and "Getting Better." Rounding out my top twenty would be a couple of more Abbey Road tunes ("Here Comes the Sun," and "Her Majesty"), "Help," "In My Life," "Eleanor Rigby," "Rocky Raccoon," and "Day Tripper."
Here's my favorite cover.
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10 comments:
Phish has done a lot of Beatles covers. I don't get Phish.
I like a couple of early Phish songs, but haven't really seen a reason to pay attention since 1992. At the time, they offered a kind of goofy minstrel tribe to those who wanted instant acceptance to a borrowed identity. No idea how the Beatles fit in.
Hmm, I missed "Ticket to Ride."
Before he quite grew up, my brother attended approximately 47,000 Phish shows, which is the source of my knowledge about the band. I think their short, radio-friendly singles are pretty fun. I can't get too worked up about interminable concert jams though. Probably takes a headful of weed to break in.
I don't have a strong opinion about the Beatles. I like most of their songs, but they've never really excited me. Boring? If so, not in an offensive way. Screaming for a Yoko Ono joke though.
My top ten list (in no particular order).
Abbey Road Medley (cheating, maybe)
Blackbird
Ticket to Ride
Strawberry Fields
Norwegian Wood
Mother Nature’s Son
Martha My Dear
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
I Am the Walrus
Paperback Writer
Honorable mention:
When I’m 64
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey (always makes me smile).
The Beatles have held up remarkably well for me. Also Pink Floyd (another band who continued to create remarkable music during times of significant conflict) and Led Zeppelin. John Lennon is dead, and Keith Richards is still performing – karma is not at all a straightforward business.
It’s very nice to be reading you again. You’re on my very short list of people I most miss from here-and-thereabouts (Keifus too).
I dunno. Sometimes I hear music that I think "held up well," and wonder if I'd feel that way if I hadn't been listening to it off and on for the last however-many years. "Wooden Ships" is playing on my i-pod while I'm writing this. I doubt many of my students would have much use for it.
But a lot of music hasn't held up well for me. It's funny - my parents were classical music lovers, and the closest thing my dad appreciated as "hip" was Dave Brubek. I remember dad talking about modern music, and its lack of complexity. Not everything the Beatles wrote was complex, but they were at least capable of it - in a way I don't hear in music from the last decade. Example of an artist I was enthusiastic about, and now I wonder (a little shamefaced) why: Ted Nugent. Lots of others, some of whom have some nostalgic value, but I can't really see myself listening to. But not the Beatles.
Ted Nugent? Ewwwwwww!
I was that way about Styx back in the day. Then "Mr. Roboto" came out, and it sucked so bad that it made me notice that everything they'd ever done sucked. Of course, I've had some opposite experiences, too. Robert Plant put out an album with Alison Krause a couple of years ago that made me go back and listen to Led Zep again--that stuff was (and still is) freakin' awesome.
Ted Nugent is only one of many. I may have mentioned this before, but I remember my very, very first album purchase. There I stood, in the record store (I'd ridden my bike), holding Aerosmith Rocks in one hand, and Abba "The Album". Guess which one I bought? [Shaking head...]
@TK -- the lists all seem to balance the serious and the comic. More than John v. Paul, it's that tension that I think drives a lot of their music.
@Arch -- If you haven't yet, check out the movie "It Might Get Loud" Streams on Netflix if you go for that sort of thing
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