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I’m on kind of a Beatles kick after seeing Love in Las Vegas, so I think I’ll plow through all the Beatles albums and post some thoughts. Since the songs are so familiar to me, I’ll rate each from one to five stars, and generate an amusing “Best Beatles Songs” list.
My ratings may seem a bit harsh - but they’re relative to other Beatles songs - two or three star ratings appear often because the four and five star songs are so incredible.
After listening to Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, hallucinogenic drugs might sound like a blast, but this unbearably meandering album is the downside, a confused, muddled, burned out mess.
Who knows what really happened during the making of this one, but it wasn’t good. After the all-around success of Sgt. Pepper I suppose it was inevitable the Beatles would falter.
This album was partner to a bizarre drug trip bus trip film that managed to make drugs look boring. Or perhaps it wasn’t just the drugs, but the hot air and ego-stroking following Sgt. Pepper that went to the Beatles’ heads, making them believe that filming their hair growing or John shoveling spaghetti would be an artistic masterpiece.
Even more depressing is the fact that some of the best tracks, Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, and All You Need Is Love weren’t even recorded specifically for this album - they were intended as singles. The first two might have even made it onto Sgt. Pepper had the Beatles not been witholding singles from their albums. The only cool, drugged-out song is I Am The Walrus. The rest emphasize the worst aspects of the Beatles - their artistic excess, disparate musical styles, and self-indulgent grand-standing. Thankfully, they toned things down for The White Album.
Magical Mystery Tour
= 3 stars
A decent enough album opener, continuing that “let’s go on a trip” show-time vibe from Sgt. Pepper. It has some neat vocals, a tempo change, and some zooming bus noises. If only something good was waiting around the bend.
The Fool On The Hill
= 1 star
Some people might like this song, but I don’t, not since I turned 21. The melody is daffy, the recorder solo completely stupid, and I don’t enjoy hearing a stoned grown man discussing a fool, whom I have no sympathy for, getting dizzy watching the world go round.
Flying
= 1 star
This song makes me cry. “Flying”? “High”? Get it? Easily one of the worst Beatles song ever.
Blue Jay Way
= 1 star
You’d have to be stoned to listen to “please don’t be long” as many times as the Beatles repeat, here. Why didn’t George Martin put a stop to this? There’s a neat cello part, but that’s all. And only someone really out of it would think a song about someone hashed out, bored to death, waiting for his friends to show up, would make a good subject for a song.
Your Mother Should Know
= 2 stars
I’ll give this Paul tune an additional star since it’s actually a complete song, but it’s still pretty bad. If this is the kind of song that was a hit before I was born, I glad I wasn’t around.
I Am The Walrus
= 5 stars
Sometimes you get lucky, and although this song represents John at his most drugged out, paranoid, and nonsensical best, it’s a true marvel of avant-garde production, with a string section, horns, crazy sound samples beamed in from what sounds like beyond the grave, and a really whacked-out, borderline psychotic vocal. The imagery is beyond nuts: semolina pilchards, yellow matter custard, really great wacky stuff. I just need one representation of the Beatles’ “out there” phase, and this is it. Plus, it doesn’t put me to sleep like the other songs on this album.
Hello, Goodbye
= 3 stars
This is a pleasant enough Paul song with good musicianship skills and interlocking melodies. Unfortunately, it’s the same innocence and cloying quality that filled much of McCartney’s career past 1975. The banal “Wonderful Christmastime” is a direct descendant of Paul’s musical hit-making assembly-line mind.
Strawberry Fields Forever
= 5 stars
This is perfection. Maybe it was George Martin’s way of arranging the horns and strings just so, or the lucky happenstance of two different versions spliced into one, but everything about it is exquisite. John’s nostalgia, the sagging melody and instruments (reminding me of an umbrella soaked through a downpour) and the collapsing coda where the rattle of Ringo’s drums gives way to a spinning cartwheel of sonic effects. Even the last tantalizing moans of John in an altered voice (did he say “I buried Paul?”) was somehow worth obsessing over. A song with this many precious details deserves more than five stars.
Penny Lane
= 5 stars
This is a perfect song, too. The high trumpet, the sinking, Beach Boys inspired bass line, the England-old-time lyrics, the sneaky-snide harmonies on “fish and finger pie” - so many glorious bits that beg for repeat listening. Even the key change leading up to a clanging piano chord is great stuff.
(There was some talk that both Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane would have been included on Sgt. Pepper, except the Beatles were still in the habit of recording singles and not including them on albums. The mind reels at the possibility.)
Baby You’re A Rich Man
= 3 stars
The guitar playing is really sloppy on this one, and the goofy harmonium noodling is inappropriate. Just shoddy work here. I do get some laughs out of John’s energy and the way he blurts out “you keep all your money…” though. But I just can’t boost it beyond average.
All You Need Is Love
= 5 stars
A great song because of the slightly rhythmically wrong Lennon verse, and the first time the Beatles explicity latched on to the “Summer of Love” thing. An awesome touch is the way the coda devolves into chaos, much as Good Morning Good Morning did on Pepper, but here symbolizing a world of people joining in on the positive message. The addition of a voice saying “she loves you” brings the Beatles’ previous legacy of fluffy pop songs forward to this song - also reminding us how much the Beatles had changed in the span of a few years.
Wikipedia: Magical Mystery Tour
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"Thanks - i'll mention the one day twitter boycott too. But a big reason why I'm okay with leaving Twitter temporarily is because I have FriendFeed - my cojones are not that big." -
You know what, I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion, But I think that anyone who can’t appreciate beatles music is just to ignorant to see the beauty of their craftsmanship. It’s not just the songs, their personality and their souls are eched into every record they have created.
Hi Mike, thanks for commenting. I think you might be slightly misunderstanding the point of this project. I listened to every single Beatles song in more or less chronological order and some are definitely better than others, in my humble opinion of course. Each song was rated relative to the other Beatles’ songs.
Thanks for visiting and commenting!
Hmm…you must be ignorant. Surely?!? If you cannot see that EVARY song they did is PARFEKT. Wild Honey PIE is as gud as Hey Jood and Revolootion Niner.
The thing that gets my goat is when the non-critical fanboy/fangirls out there accuse other fans who might not grant “exalted” status to every bit of work from an artist’s ouevre as “ignorant”. As if any criticism towards your object of affection would make you a “non-fan” or an unappreciative listener. Gimme a break.
As before, everyone is entitled to an opinion. But the ignorant listeners are those too deaf to consider the fact that the Beatles, like any other artists, had their share of hits and misses. What makes the Beatles “exalted”, imho, is the fact that their hit-to-miss ratio far exceeded that of their peers (both past and present).
Oh, and lest there be any mistake. I am a huge Beatles fan.
Uh yeah. I think the other point I would like to add, is that if I did this project and gave every song five or four stars just because it was by The Beatles, that would be an even more pointless exercise, not to mention rather dull reading.
The Fool On the Hill = 1 star ?????? This song must bring back bad memories for you or something because from a strictly musical point of view there is no way this song can be less than 3 stars. I personally would give it a 4 stars myself. However I do enjoy reading your reviews of all the albums and like your iTunes ranking system. I am still going through the ranking process myself.