Monday Music Club: Our Favourite Beatles Songs

We were in Liverpool a few days ago for the bTWEEN 09 conference and have been on a Beatles kick ever since. Attempting to narrow down my top 5 Beatles songs was the toughest Monday Music Club challenge for me thus far. Mei disagrees and wants you all to know that:

This list formed itself pretty easily with three all-time favorites coming to me instantly and two favorites-of-the-moment that have been on serious iPod rotation for the past few weeks.

Good luck making it through all of the commentary. Yikes.




Chris's Songs

1. I Saw Her Standing There: Not just my favorite Beatles songs, but one of my favorite songs ever. Go ahead, I'll let you roll your eyes (like Mei did), but it doesn't get much better than 'one, two, three, FAH...'

2. While My Guitar Gently Weeps: This song has it all: critical acclaim, Eric Clapton, a continuation of the 'Paul is dead' meme and, most importantly, my love.

3. Ballad of John and Yoko: So simple it only took two of the Beatles to record it yet so good it winds up in my top 5. I still don't like Yoko though.

4. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away: I've always enjoyed the way John sang "heyyyy" in this song. It's not unlike the joy Juvenile brings when he says "unnhhh" in Slow Motion. Comparing John Lennon to Juvenile? I'll accept my nobel prize now thank you.

5. She Loves You: This bubblegum pop is so sugary and so tasty. This tune always reminds me of summer and makes me want to roll down the windows of my car and sing along as loudly as I can. Plus the only words I know in German are Sie Liebt Dich.

Mei's Songs

1. I Me Mine: This one’s a new favorite. Yes, it’s super cliché, but I listened to the Beatles the whole way to Liverpool, and the dreaminess of the first part is perfect for watching the English landscape pass by out the train window.

2. A Day in the Life: One of my favorite songs of all time. I read in one of the few authorized Beatles biographies that a number of the lines were inspired by actual headlines. I also like the addition of the funny little section by Paul in a primarily John song, as well as the massive orchestral randomness bits. Apparently they got a whole orchestra together and just told them to start at one note and then just improvise playing up the scale to all end on E at a certain time. So many moments of genius in this song.

3. Golden Slumbers: This is one of those songs that I love with a passion, a song that transports me somewhere every time I hear it. I’ve included Carry That Weight as well because the two were actually recorded as one piece. Ideally, I’d like to include the Polythene Pam/She Came in through the Bathroom Window lead-in, but those are technically separate songs, even though they were generally performed together, and that would be cheating. So my fourth song is one I’ve been listening to a great deal lately...

4. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window: For some reason, I am currently obsessed with this song. As I’ve already mentioned, it hurts to hear this song without the Polythene Pam intro. Abbey Road is one of my favorite albums of all time and the latter part of the record flows so perfectly as a cohesive unit. I feel that all the songs really need to be heard in context or there’s something missing. However, this isn’t really the case for the songs at the beginning, which brings me to what may be my favorite Beatles song, one of the few written by George Harrison...

5. Something: For a long time I wondered about the similarity between this song and another song I love, James Taylor’s ‘Something In The Way She Moves.’ Turns out it was initially based on Taylor’s song. I guess there’s just...something about both those songs. This one reminds me of sunny days in my kitchen in San Francisco. It’s so beautiful that it’s hard for me to talk about without sounding ridiculous so we’ll just end this here.