Beatlemania Redux

Scene from Hard Day's Night
at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/books/review/Handy-t.html

My brother, Dan, has been after me to come up with a list of my top 100 Beatles songs in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' first US tour.  I unilaterally compromised, and came up with a list of 50.

Dan, five years older than me, introduced me to the Beatles. We shared a bedroom and its radio and little record player (which taught me the concept of infinity--we noticed that the picture on the inside of the lid was a silhouette of a boy and girl dancing near the same record player, with the image repeated, of the same boy and girl dancing in front of the same record player--this kept me up a few nights wondering if that ever-shrinking boy and girl would ever end).  Dan was, what, maybe twelve when he started building his collection of 45s, and he had some of the mid-Sixties releases.  The only one I remember for sure is Twist and Shout.

We of course did the air band thing--though we didn't call it that back then, and I'm not sure the term is even used anymore today--perhaps it went away with the 20th century.  Anyway, Dan always got to be Paul, my older sister Julie was usually John, I was George (unless my fit about never getting to be John worked on Julie), and if we got my younger sister, Robyn, into the act, she would be Ringo.  We even got Mom and Dad to watch us a few times.  In other words, if not immersed, we were still sharing the national bath of Beatlemania.  None of us did the rock posters, though, and Julie and Robyn didn't pine over Paul or John (at least, not to my knowledge).  And I remember watching Help! and Yellow Submarine with interest, but not fascination.

Our repertoires of musical tastes soon diversified, and by the time of high school for me (1975-78), I was rarely listening to the Beatles, and latched on to other music Dan introduced me to every summer when he was home from college: Led Zeppelin, Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, CSN&Y, the Doobie Brothers, among others.  And I fell under the thrall of Stevie Wonder and other R&B musicians like Earth, Wind, and Fire, Sly and the Family Stone, and Aretha Franklin.  And there were Kansas, ELO, and, well, forgive me, Styx (if I hear Come Sail Away one more time--or worse, Lady--I swear I'm going to throw up).  And I was developing a little classical side, a gift from my father, who sat me down one day in front of our console stereo (with stereophonic speakers, don't you know), and had me listen with him, at full-blast--we were the only ones home--Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.  I was duly blown away.

But I started listening to the Beatles again regularly during Peace Corps (1984-88), and haven't really stopped.  The White Album has become the common opening music for long road trips with Margo.  I'll often listen to the Abbey Road medley while doing some sort of data entry.  And after reading Jeff Gould's Can't Buy Me Love a few years ago, my admiration their music has only increased (Gould walks the reader through the production of each album and song, noting the techniques and innovations along the way--his insights just fascinated me).  They are the touchstone of my childhood, and occupy a high place in my pantheon of musical demigods.

So here's my top fifty Beatles songs.  My Beatles collection is not comprehensive, but I selected these from fourteen albums holding more than 200 songs.  Choosing them was more difficult than I thought it would be.  I tried scoring songs in terms of musicality, lyrics, sheer cleverness, and the time-and-place thing.  But that was taking way too long.  So I went with this criterion: what could I not bear to not hear ever again?  But my original four criteria continued to play a role.  Musicality is why A Day in the Life is so high on my list.  That simple acoustic strum, joined by ghostly piano chords, and then Lennon's plaintive voice, a moment of chaos, and then McCartney saying he "Woke up. . ."  Something gets the the three spot for musicality and lyrics.  Harrison's sumptuous guitar work and lines pop up in my head all the time.  Cleverness?  That's why McCartney's hilarious Rocky Racoon is way up there--that faux western twinge, and that joke at the end about Gideon's Bible.  That's also why Happiness is a Warm Gun, Piggies, and Why Don't We Do It in the Road, made it in the top 50 (and I love the satirical high brow musical style in Piggies).  As for time-and-place, there are innumerable references I can make between songs and moments in my life, but for an example, a Peace Corps friend, Jack, and I broke out into Lovely Rita, as a fellow volunteer, named Rita, joined us in the back of cattle truck, to the mystified merriment of everyone there.  I regularly sing, in my head, the opening lines to Baby You're a Rich Man when encountering the pretentiousness of the wealthy, or the super-hip ("How does it feel to be/one of the beautiful/people?").  The Abbey Road medley gets number one spot because it combines all four.

There are columns for Dan and Julie's rankings of the same songs.  NR means my song didn't make it into their rankings (for Dan, his top fifty; for Julie, her top twenty).  You'll find Dan and Julie's lists below mine.  It's interesting, to me, anyway, how three siblings born in 1955, 1957, and 1960, can have very different takes on Beatles music.  Two of my top twenty songs make it into Dan's top twenty compared to eight in Julie's list.  Dan and I share but 27 songs in our top fifty lists, in part because I like Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album a lot more than Dan does, while Dan shows an affinity for Help! and Hey Jude.

Is it my penchant for stranger sounds?  That still begs the question of why I might have that penchant, and I guess what I'm getting at here is the question of where taste comes from.  The three of us experienced the same socialization.  But we occupied different rungs in the five sibling set, and came into the world, and became cognizant, at different stages of a sometimes turbulent family history.  And there's the obvious point of individual variation--age and gender, different kinds of internal wiring, different experiences, and our own sets of peers (a psyche colleague once told me that by the age of ten, peers have a stronger socialization effect than parents).

Rather than focus on difference, I could also note our similarity--that we three even bothered to put together these lists, which reveals something of our "sociodemographic niche."  As one researcher put it:

Music may seem like a light topic, but sociologists would argue that it's important because the things people do for fun form the basis for a lot of connections between people, and across those social connections a lot of social resources and information about jobs and other things can flow. Being familiar with the right kind of culture can put you at ease with people who can provide you with certain resources.

"Blah, blah, blah" the Beatles might say, and then start singing "I'm just happy to dance with you."

Rank	Andy's List	Album	Dan	Julie
1	Abby Road Medley	Abbey Road	14	NR
2	A Day In The Life	Sgt. Pepper's	1	NR
3	Something	Abbey Road	22	6
4	Rocky Racoon	White Album	NR	NR
5	I Am The Walrus	Magical Mystery Tour	23	NR
6	The Fool On The Hill	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	NR
7	Hello Goodbye	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	5
8	I'm Looking Through You	Rubber Soul	NR	NR
9	You've Got to Hide Your Love Away	Help!	29	8
10	Here, There And Everywhere	Revolver	37	3
11	Baby You're A Rich Man	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	NR
12	Yesterday	Help!	19	NR
13	Magical Mystery Tour	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	NR
14	In My Life	Rubber Soul	3	14
15	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Sgt. Pepper's	NR	NR
16	Blackbird	White Album	34	2
17	All You Need Is Love	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	19
18	With a Little Help From My Friends	Sgt. Pepper's	36	12
19	While My Guitar Gently Weeps	White Album	21	NR
20	Dear Prudence	White Album	NR	NR
21	Martha My Dear	White Album	NR
22	A Hard Day's Night	A Hard Day's Night	8
23	Eight Days a Week	Beatles For Sale	18
24	Lovely Rita	Sgt. Pepper's	NR
25	Please Please Me	Please Please Me	NR
26	I'm So Tired	White Album	NR
27	All My Loving	With The Beatles	NR
28	For No One	Revolver	46
29	Love Me Do	Please Please Me	NR
30	Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da	White Album	NR
31	Across The Universe	Let It Be	33
32	We Can Work It Out	Yesterday and Today	38
33	Strawberry Fields Forever	Magical Mystery Tour	9
34	Can't Buy Me Love	A Hard Day's Night	28
35	Hey Jude	Hey Jude	6
36	I Saw Her Standing There	Please Please Me	25
37	Help!	Help!	16
38	Penny Lane	Magical Mystery Tour	26
39	Revolution 1	White Album	NR
40	Lady Madonna	Hey Jude	35
41	The Long And Winding Road	Let It Be	NR
42	Got To Get You Into My Life	Revolver	NR
43	Happiness Is A Warm Gun	White Album	24
44	Mother Nature's Son	White Album	NR
45	Norwegian Wood	Rubber Soul	47
46	I Should Have Known Better	A Hard Day's Night	17
47	Piggies	White Album	NR
48	Maxwell's Silver Hammer	Abbey Road	NR
49	Come Together	Abbey Road	11
50	Why Don't We Do It In The Road?	White Album	NR

Rank	Dan's List	Album	Andy	Julie
1	A Day in the Life	Sgt. Pepper's	2	NR
2	Let It Be	Let It Be	NR	NR
3	In My Life	Rubber Soul	14	14
4	Revolution	Hey Jude	NR	NR
5	I Want to Hold Your Hand	Meet the Beatles	NR	NR
6	Hey Jude	Hey Jude	35	NR
7	Here Comes the Sun	Abbey Road	NR	1
8	A Hard Day's Night	A Hard Day's Night	22	NR
9	Strawberry Fields Forever	Magical Mystery Tour	33	NR
10	Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds	Sgt. Pepper's	NR	NR
11	Come Together	Abbey Road	49	NR
12	Ticket to Ride	Help!	NR	NR
13	If I Fell	A Hard Day's Night	NR	18
14	Abbey Road Medley	Abbey Road	1	NR
15	She Loves You	Beatles' Second Album	NR	NR
16	Help!	Help!	37	NR
17	I Should Have Known Better	A Hard Day's Night	46	NR
18	Eight Days a Week	Beatles VI	23	NR
19	Yesterday	White Album	12	NR
20	I Feel Fine	Help!	NR	NR
21	While My Guitar Gently Weeps	Beatles '65	19
22	Something	Abbey Road	3
23	I Am the Walrus	Magical Mystery Tour	5
24	Happiness is a Warm Gun	White Album	43
25	I Saw Her Standing There	Meet the Beatles	36
26	Penny Lane	Magical Mystery Tour	38
27	Eleanor Rigby	Revolver	NR
28	Can't Buy Me Love	A Hard Day's Night	34
29	You've Got to Hide Your Love Away	Help!	9
30	She Said She Said	Revolver	NR
31	Paperback Writer	Hey Jude	NR
32	Day Tripper	Yesterday and Today	NR
33	Across the Universe	Let It Be	31
34	Blackbird	White Album	16
35	Lady Madonna	Hey Jude	40
36	With a Little Help From My Friends	Sgt. Pepper's	18
37	Here, There, and Everywhere	Revolver	10
38	We Can Work It Out	Single	32
39	You're Going to Lose That Girl	Help!	NR
40	Don't Let Me Down	Hey Jude	NR
41	Get Back	Let It Be	NR
42	Girl	Rubber Soul	NR
43	All You Need is Love	Magical Mystery Tour	17
44	The Ballad of John and Yoko	Hey Jude	NR
45	I've Just Seen a Face	Help!	NR
46	For No One	Revolver	28
47	Norwegian Wood	Rubber Soul	45
48	Back In the USSR	White Album	NR
49	Drive My Car	Rubber Soul	NR
50	I Want You (She's So Heavy)	Abbey Road	NR

Rank	Julie's List	Dan	Andy
1	Here Comes the Sun	7	NR
2	Blackbird	34	16
3	Here, There, and Everywhere	37	10
4	Penny Lane	26	38
5	Hello, Goodbye	NR	7
6	Something	22	3
7	Happy Xmas	NR	NR
8	You’ve got to Hide Your Love Away	29	9
9	The Long and Winding Road	NR	41
10	Ob-Li-Da, Ob-Li-Da	NR	30
11	Get Back	41	NR
12	With a Little Help From my Friends	36	18
13	And I Love Her	NR	NR
14	In My Life	3	14
15	Happy Birthday	NR	NR
16	Love Me Do	NR	29
17	Norwegian Wood	47	45
18	If I Fell	13	NR
19	All You Need is Love	NR	17
20	Hey Jude	6	35