So What are the Greatest Songs of the Beatles?
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
Derek Taylor recalls in his book “Fifty Years Adrift” the frenzy that was before when the Beatles swept the world by the storm,: “I have never seen anything like it. Nor heard any noise to approximate the ceaseless, frantic, hysterical scream which met the Beatles when they took the stage after what seemed a hundred years of earlier acts. All very good, all marking time, because no one had come for anything other than the Beatles…”
The Beatles were one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music, selling over one billion records internationally. In the United Kingdom, The Beatles released more than 40 different singles, albums, and EPs that reached number one, earning more number one albums (15) than any other group in UK chart history. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, The Beatles have sold more albums in the United States than any other band. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked The Beatles number one in its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. According to that same magazine, The Beatles’ innovative music and cultural impact helped define the 1960s, and their influence on pop culture is still evident today. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of top-selling Hot 100 artists to celebrate the chart’s fiftieth anniversary; The Beatles topped it.
Almost five decades have passed and the songs of the Fab 4 still reverberate in the world of the music scene and continue to exert influence on the works of young artists of today. Their songs are classic—universal and timeless.
If I were to be asked the top ten songs of Beatles which appeal to me most, they are the following:
1. “Hey Jude” is a song written by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon/McCartney, and released as a single by The Beatles in 1968. Originally titled “Hey Jules”, McCartney wrote the ballad to comfort John Lennon’s son Julian during his parents’ divorce. “Hey Jude” was the first single from The Beatles’ record label Apple Records. Over seven minutes in length, “Hey Jude” was at the time the longest single ever to top the British charts. It also spent nine weeks as number one in the United States—the longest run at the top of the American charts for a Beatles single. The single has sold approximately eight million copies and is frequently included on professional lists of the all-time best songs.
2. Let It Be, the twelfth and final studio album, was released on 8 May 1970 by the band’s Apple Records label shortly after the group’s announced breakup. Despite receiving a largely negative review from Rolling Stone magazine at the time of its release, this determination was later retracted with the album being ranked number 86 in the magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003.
3. Yesterday. According to the Guinness Book of Records, “Yesterday” has the most cover versions of any song ever written. The song remains popular today with more than 3,000 recorded cover versions, the first hitting the United Kingdom top 10 three months after the release of Help!. Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century alone. The song was not released as a single in the UK at the time of the US release, and thus never gained number 1 single status in that country. However, “Yesterday” was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners.
“Yesterday” takes the form of a melancholic acoustic ballad about a break-up. It was the first official recording by The Beatles that relied upon a performance by a single member of the band: Paul McCartney was accompanied solely by a string quartet. The final recording differed so greatly from other works by The Beatles that the other three members of the band vetoed the release of the song as a single in the United Kingdom. Although credited to “Lennon/McCartney”, the song was written solely by McCartney.
4. Strawberry Fields Forever. Recorded at the end of 1966, the song was written by John Lennon during the filming of How I Won The War and is formally credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team. It is named after a Salvation Army house in Beaconsfield Road, Woolton, Liverpool where Lennon played as a child.”Strawberry Fields Forever” was originally recorded for the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), but was instead released in February 1967 as a double A-side single backed with Paul McCartney’s “Penny Lane”. “Strawberry Fields Forever” reached number eight in the US, with numerous critics describing it as one of the group’s best recordings.[1][2] It is one of the defining works of the psychedelic rock genre and has been covered by many other artists.
5. And I Love Her. It was released 20 July 1964 with “If I Fell” as a single by Capitol Records in the United States, reaching #12 in Billboard. The Beatles performed “And I Love Her” just once outside of Abbey Road Studios. This song was one of the first ballads with a title that starts in mid-sentence. Paul McCartney was pleased with himself that he came up with this clever idea.
6. “If I Fell” is a song by The Beatles which first appeared on the 1964 UK album A Hard Day’s Night and the US compilation album Something New. It was written primarily by John Lennon, with help from Paul McCartney. “If I Fell” was a part of The Beatles repertoire during The Beatles’ US and Canadian tour in 1964. The group typically performed the song faster than the studio version, and Lennon and McCartney often sang it with barely suppressed laughter. On more than one occasion it was introduced as “If I Fell Over”
7.Yellow Submarine. Although it had previously been released on the Revolver album, it became the title song for the 1968 animated United Artists film, also called Yellow Submarine. It is also the title for the soundtrack album to the film, released as part of The Beatles’ music catalogue. The song was better received in Britain than in the United States. The single went to #1 on every major British chart, remained at #1 for four weeks and charted for 13 weeks. It won an Ivor Novello Award for the highest certified sales of any single issued in the UK in 1966. However, it failed to reach #1 on the American charts. A contributing factor may have been the “Bigger than Jesus” controversy.
8. Here Comes the Sun” is a song by George Harrison from The Beatles’ 1969 album Abbey Road. The song, one of Harrison’s best-known Beatles contributions alongside “Something”, originated from a songwriting collaboration between Harrison and close friend Eric Clapton called “Badge,” recorded by Clapton’s group Cream, and featuring an arpeggiated guitar riff that is similar to the one that forms the bridge of “Here Comes the Sun”. 1969 was a difficult year for Harrison: he was arrested for marijuana possession, he had his tonsils removed, and he had temporarily quit the band. The song was written while Harrison was away from all of these troubles.
9. All My Loving. Written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney), from the 1963 album With the Beatles. The song was released in the United States in 1964, on the album Meet The Beatles!. It was the first of only a few occasions where McCartney wrote the lyrics before the music, as it was apparently conceived as a poem while he was shaving. McCartney originally envisioned it as a country & western song, and the music was written on a piano backstage during The Beatles’ Roy Orbison tour, with George Harrison adding his Nashville style guitar solo on the recording. Similarly employing the “letter” song model as used on “P.S. I Love You”, “All My Loving” promptly drew much critical acclaim, and also attracted large amounts of radio air-play.
10. The Long and Winding Road” is a ballad written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) that originally appeared on The Beatles’ album Let It Be. It became The Beatles’ last #1 song in the United States on 23 May 1970[1], and was the last single released by the quartet. “The Long and Winding Road” was listed with “For You Blue” as a double-sided hit when the single hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1970. While the released version of the song was very successful, the post-production modifications to the song by producer Phil Spector angered McCartney to the point that when he made his case in court for breaking up The Beatles as a legal entity, McCartney cited the treatment of “The Long and Winding Road” as one of six reasons for doing so.
