One of the last somewhat lovely-dovey Beatles singles akin to "I Want To Hold You Hand" or "Love Me Do" was For Sale's "Eight Days A Week". McCartney said that the title came from one of Ringo's malapropism's as well as a chauffeur that he had once who said that he had been working those many days a week. So who knows the exact origin. The song has another Beatles and possibly pop music first by fading IN instead of just out. This came to be after numerous ideas where tossed around in studio to make it a bit different. The end result is a mushy love song with a great verse and chorus and as typically great as early Beatles can be.
One of the most memorable backward guitar solos of all time can be found in Revolver's "I'm Only Sleeping". George Harrison spent about an entire day painstakingly double tracking it, going for a dreamy vibe. It is one of the many great sonic moments that Revolver has. John penned the tune pretty straightforwardly about how fun it is to lay in bed and do not a thing. So it is a lazy man's anthem of sorts. The entire song is slow and drony, down to the almost slurred vocals. It effectively sounds like it was written and performed whilst laying horizontal on a mattress with many pillows and blankets. Mmm...now I too am sleepy.
This is another one that was originally intended for another artist, Tommy Quickly in this case. Quickly never used it so it ended up thankfully as the opening track to Beatles For Sale. Another slightly bitter and borderline creepy lyric from John about trying to contact a possible unfaithful ladyfriend and routinely getting "no reply", the song stands out uniquely as the only acoustic album opener in the Beatles catalog until "Two of Us" off of the finale Let It Be. "No Reply" has one of the finest middle eight sections the group ever did as well.
John Lennon took a tongue-in-cheek jab at Beatles fanatics whom he felt made far too much of the band's more nonsensical lyrics with the brilliantly self-aware "Glass Onion". The third song and first to feature Ringo on drums off The Beatles (The White Album), "Onion" throws a slew of past song and lyric references in, the line "Here's another clue for you all; the Walrus was Paul", deliberately meant to confuse people even more. Though it has always amazed me that anyone would bother at all to try and make any kind of sense of "I Am the Walrus" in the first place. Apparently John agreed.
Along with "This Boy", "Yes It Is" was another B-side ballad that modeled itself similarly and likewise features some of the most impressive three part harmonies on any Beatles song. George also busted out the volume pedal and his guitar accents are gorgeous. The vocal melodies are soothing and intricate, making this easily one of the band's most lush ballads. Ringo is not given all that much to do but as literally always, he does what is absolutely perfect with a tambourine and some brushes. The best timekeeper in rock music, once again laying back and letting the rest of his band sing their asses off.
This I am sure will be far too low a ranking for anyone reading this. I commonly see "In My Life" in the top ten of any Beatles song list so I expect some sort of a backlash. Yet just as I adore all of these songs, plus most of the ones that did NOT make the list, and just as I had no mediocre words for "Yesterday" which I had even lower than this, "In My Life" is utterly perfect. The sped-up piano solo from George Martin is easily the best thing that he ever personally performed on a Beatles song. Also one could argue that Lennon penned no finer set of lyrics while in the group, certainly in their earlier period.
For anyone who was lucky enough to stare at the Beatles from afar and listen to nothing but screaming girls while on their final tour, "Paperback Writer" would have been the "latest" song that they would perform. This is noteworthy for being the first Beatles song to prominently feature the bass as a lead instrument in the mix. McCartney played a Rickenbaker instead of his trusty Hofner and a different mic technique was used in the studio to great effect. The song also only has two chords in it, one of the band's most famous riffs, and three part harmonies inspired by the Beach Boy's Pet Sounds. All of this is a good thing.
The opener to With the Beatles is one of the many examples to be found of the band utilizing then unusual chords for an uptempo rock and roll song. A critic at the time said that they utilized Aeolian cadences in "It Won't Be Long" and apparently from there, they were no longer exclusively looked at as a British boy band by the masses, but instead as crafty songsmiths and musicians. All that aside though, "It Won't Be Long" is just a perfect example of early Beatles at their most joyous and typically bombastic. They did not even bother releasing it as a single or playing it live, thus was hefty the amount of crowd-pleasing hits they had to indulge in instead.
Eric Clapton enters the Beatles picture once again as a first-hand witness to George Harrison composing "Here Comes the Sun". Clapton and Harrison were kicking it one day in the former's garden in April, acoustic guitar in hand for George when the song just came to him, pretty much complete. It eventually found its home on Abbey Road and along with "Something", both represented arguably the two most successful and best songs that George had come up with to date. "Here Comes the Sun" has endured as well if not better than even the best Beatles songs, the repeated "Sun, sun, sun here it comes" part is just impossible not to smile at.
I have already had and will continue to have many examples here of John, Paul, and George utilizing three part harmonies possibly better than any three individuals ever have. Yet trumping all other songs on all other albums and compilations is Abbey Road's "Because". Straight up, this is the best three-part vocal harmony in Beatles history. John wrote it after hearing Yoko play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on piano, simply reversing the chords around. Then George Martin played the opening riff on harpsichord and George Harrison added a moog synthesizer as well, creating a dark and haunting track that again, features vocals of the highest order.
The most drugged-out song lyrically in the Beatles canon is rather undeniably "I Am the Walrus". As I said a few entries ago, to decipher the lyrics in "Walrus" is an act of futility. It is just a glorious gobbledy gook of nonsense, intentionally so. Lennon needed to come up with a song for the Magical Mystery Tour film and as said project was ill-advised and on all the drugs from the beginning anyway, something like "I Am the Walrus" not only HAS to be there, but also ended up being far and away the whole project's most memorable moment. Possibly the best song that makes no sense that has ever been recorded.
"I Call Your Name" was written for another group and actually got released as a B-side, (along with another Lennon-McCartney on the A), by fellow Liverpool and George Martin produced group the Dakotas. Lennon apparently was not thrilled with said band's rendition and got his own group to record it, finding a home on The Beatles Second Album and the Long Tall Sally EP, both from 1964. It has still remained an under the radar Beatles tune all of these decades later and as you can see, I clearly love it. The swinging time signature change during the solo is a splendid touch, as is the cowbell of course, but the vocal melody is rare for not being harmonized and still being as good as anything else this band has put out.
John Lennon has committed a good number of biting lyrics to paper, (or wood in this case), and "Sexy Sadie" is one of the very best examples. A rumor circulated near the end of the group's stay at their Maharishi Mahesh Yogi retreat in Rishikesh, India that the Yogi had been womanizing during the whole time and this sat not at all well with Mr. Lennon. Most likely no truth belonged to said rumor, but thankfully John caught wind of it just the same and "Sexy Sadie" came out of it. Originally simply called "Maharishi" and leaving literally nothing to the imagination, George insisted the title be changed as he was still rather fond of the giggling Indian guru and his peaceful ways.
The second and best song in the realm of lying in bed and being ass-tired that John Lennon threw on a Beatles album was "I'm So Tired" from (The White Album). Again written in India during the Maharishi pilgrimage, Lennon was homesick from Yoko Ono, suffering insomnia, and then the greatness that is this song became a thing. More directly inspired by lying awake all night than wanting to be lazy on a mattress, (see Revolver's "I'm Only Sleeping"), John still slumberly sings the verses yet comes alive near the end with the phenomenal "I give you everything I got for a little piece of mind" section which definitely ranks as one of my all time favorite Beatles moments.
It is obvious to most that the superior in the double A-side single of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" is the former, but that certainly does not mean that "Lane" is any slouch by any means. Just as John had been inspired by nostalgia for "Fields", Paul went even further with this one, loading it with direct Liverpool references and keeping the melody and music more on the upbeat, cheerful side. The results are exquisite, to put it mildly. In many ways, this is a definitive Paul song; a perfectly crafted, polished, poetic pop gem that is impossible to get sick of. Possibly the best, (only?), piccolo trumpet solo in rock music too I would wager.
Right before the Beatles headed off to learn how to meditate from the Maharishi, they quickly cut and released this single, their last on the Parlophone label in their native U.K, "Hey Jude" showing up next and acting as their own Apple Records debut. Whether the composition or unveiling of "Lady Madonna" was rushed matters not a tit, as it utterly rocks all the same, especially for a piano song. McCartney's bass is massive sounding and the horn section and sax solo are flawless. Paul wrote this deliberately to sound like a boogie-woogie, Fats Domino song. Fat's himself later covered it, thus bringing the cosmos full circle.
One of the more hilarious inspirations for a Beatles lyric was Peter Fonda Debbie-Downering everybody at a party in August of 1965. Apparently the Beatles or at least John was tripping balls and enjoying himself while watching a bunch of hot girls dance around. At this point, Fonda of all people kept coming over and talking about a near fatal gun-shot would incident that he had and that he "knew what it was like to be dead". Lennon essentially told him to fuck off and stop ruining his buzz, but thankfully he was not too high that he forgot the indecent. Thus, snippets of their conversation made their way into Revolver's "She Said She Said". Musically this is a siege of three different things Lennon was working on at the time, George helping out with the arrangement.
One of my favorite things about Paul McCartney is that given the opportunity, he will give the Beatles credit for inventing everything that he possibly can. Whether or not "I Feel Fine" was the very first deliberate use of feedback on a recording and Jimi Hendrix upon hearing it came up with his whole schtick as Paul would suggest is besides the point. What is the point is that "I Feel Fine" is awesome. The song was rare in that it was based off of a riff, one that John Lennon came up with that was inspired by a Bobby Parker song called "Watch Your Step". Lennon ran off and finished the song in a day, birthing their eight A-side single in the process. Ringo also once again knocks it out of the park here, which is icing on the cake.
Without realizing it, I put "I'm A Loser", (the song that almost got released as a single until John wrote "I Feel Fine" to dethrone its place), right after it on this list. Dylan-inspired, folk goodness with the most self depreciating lyrics to date on a Beatles song, "I'm A Loser" was the second acoustically-driven song on Beatles For Sale. It is also the slightly better one. The harmonica solo is excellent as is the near- a capella opening harmonies. It is the album's high-water mark and one of the first and best "serious" songs in the Beatles catalog that was not just about holding hands and buying diamond rings. There were many more to come of course.
Possibly pissed off at critics, (and maybe even John?), who routinely accused him of only writing pretty ballads, Paul McCartney came up with the real headbanguh "Helter Skelter" also to one-up The Who's "I Can See for Miles" in sheer velocity and volume. Easily the heaviest Beatles song ever recorded, (how else does one explain Ringo's blisters on his fingers?), as well as the only bit of hard rock about a playground slide, "Skelter" has been covered by many a band that uses heavy guitars and is almost too easy of a choice for a metal act to take for the obligatory Fab Four song to do for a hoot. I will just keep listening to the original and appreciating the innovation thank you very much.
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