NO GENRE

Here’s the final installment of my countdown of my favorite Beatles songs ever.  Check out Parts 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 in the series so far.

5.  Martha, My Dear – I’ve always secretly loved the term chamber pop.  It suggests a kind of elegantly intricate songcraft that got co-opted by a bunch of sensitive guys with acoustic guitars.  But I like to imagine that “Martha, My Dear” is the pinnacle of the power of chamber pop.  This cooly English love poem begins innocently enough, but soon McCartney’s gentle voice soon on that winkingly soulful edge that he occasionally flashed.  The song is so meticulously composed that it often sounds like filigreed soul or baroque rhythm and blues, which is basically the essential sound of Paul McCartney.

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4.  Here, There, and Everywhere – The Beatles’ response to The Beach Boys’ perfect pop symphony, Pet Sounds, is this tender song.  But whereas Wilson’s melodies were gracefully curved, McCartney’s best melody was a smeary wash that could still compete with anything from Pet Sounds. This swooning dream of a song is just so unabashedly pretty.  It feels almost too delicate, too fragile to bear the weight of its praises.  In fact, it even feels weird to sing along to it. It’s like watching a newly-married couple dance and insisting on cutting in the middle of the song.  Just sit down, drink your drink, and admire the lovely scenery.

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3.  A Day in the Life – From the suicide that opens that song to McCartney’s mid-day reverie to that final chord that rings like an awakening consciousness, “A Day in the Life” is out-and-out masterpiece of song-craft and production-craft.  But beyond the song’s obvious importance, it’s a hauntingly disembodied narrative that just barely tells a story: a man shoots himself at a traffic light, our narrator watches a film in a dingy theater, another man altogether goes about his day.  Ranging from mundane to tragic, “A Day in the Life” is a sort of pop Ulysses for those who never had the time or the patience for Joyce.  

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2.  Hey Jude – The Beatles were ultimately a life-affirming band.  And nowhere is their optimism more potent and genuine and affecting than on “Hey Jude.”  Originally penned as a pep-talk to Lennon’s son Julian, who was stressed about his parents’ divorce, the song has taken on a life of its own.  From that first striking piano chord to the long, soulful ride into silence, “Hey Jude” has to be the most universally beloved Beatles song.  Everyone loves this song: children, future soccer moms, frat boys, sensitive boys and girls, hack punk rockers, kids with new snare drums, sweet old guys, this fucking guy, Wilson Pickett loved the song harder than almost anyone else, and on and on and on . . .  

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1.  Twist and Shout - Rock n Roll was originally slang for fucking.  Not sex, not whoopie, and certainly not making love.  Fucking. “Twist and Shout,” then, is the ultimate rock n roll song because it is the ultimate song about wanting to fuck someone.  I mean, listen to Lennon make a fetish of this young girl’s hips.  He sounds dangerous; he sounds like a hormonal animal pulsing with blinding lust.  He sounds like he’s tearing out his own throat.  In a sense, this is exactly why button-down America collectively freaked out about the prospect of rock n roll.  These guys wanted to fuck your daughters, and they weren’t ashamed to scream it at the top of their lungs.  What’s more, it’s clear that these good daughters wanted to fuck right back.  And The Beatles were giving them permission:  ”C’mon and work it on out!”  The song subverts an entire moral order: it undermines the stiffling hegemony of procreation and argues for a redefined natural order premised on the idea that men and women can and should do what they please in their short lives, that women have an inherent sexual agency, that rock n roll is a form of salvation that delivers more kicks than a stuffy church.  This song will forever cement the promise of rock n roll: it won’t change the world so much as it will change minds.  Rock n roll makes promises and expects you to keep them.  Rock n roll gives you permission and obliges you to follow through.  It expects you to work it on out.  

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The very solipsistic countdown continues with the penultimate five in the list.

For the uninitiated, I’ve been trying over the past week to decide (i.e. write about) my favorite Beatles songs to celebrate iTunes’ (not really) historic acquisition of the band’s catalog.  Honestly, it’s a chance for me to codify my favorite songs of theirs and create a venue where I can write about them.  Check out Parts 1, 2, and 3 in the series so far.  And check back, of course, in the next couple of days as I finish up the list with my 5 favorite Beatles songs.  Obvious picks and heretic dark horses will abound.  I promise.

10.  And Your Bird Can Sing – Lennon dismissively called this song “fancy paper around an empty box.”  I’m not sure what his hang-up was, but I’ve always loved the warm and fuzzy tones of those Rickenbackers singing.  It’s obvious that Lennon thought it was a throwaway; he couldn’t figure out how to end the thing.  The song abruptly cuts before Lennon has figured out how to treat such a gem-like melody.  But the song, for me, is a testament that even in the midst of a troubled composition, Lennon and McCartney could dash off an unforgettable song.  

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9.  Helter Skelter – An illustrated definition of irony:  The Beatles’ resident sweetheart also happened to compose the band’s most devastatingly loud fuck-all; a song written by visionary love children becomes the rallying cry of a sociopathic cult leader.  

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8.  We Can Work It Out – It’s all too easy to make too much of Lennon and McCartney’s duet here.  On the surface, yes, McCartney plays the eternal optimist to Lennon’s clear-eyed realist.  McCartney’s snappy verses contrast sharply with Lennon’s mournful harmonium in the middle sections.  But Lennon yearns to be more cooperative: “There’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.”  And McCartney is more prickly than he initially appears: he keeps on insisting that his audience listen to him.  Lennon and McCartney were always a balanced study in contrast blah blah blah.  ”We Can Work It Out” is the most balanced composition in The Beatles’ catalog blah blah blah.  But any band that sneaks in a pessimistic waltz section in the middle of an A side written in sturdy 4/4 is a band obviously ahead of its time.  

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7.  Rocky Raccoon – A couple of months ago, I got into a relatively heated argument with a co-worker about “Rocky Raccoon.”  I tried to convince him that that song was my favorite Beatles song ever.  I contended that it was their most narratively satisfying song and that the Old West heroics pastiche was clever and charming.  I still think all of this is true, but the real reason that I love “Rocky Raccoon” is that my college roommate and I convinced an entire floor of our dorm to adore this song.  There were at least a dozen times when our room was filled with drunk college kids singing about poor Rocky’s revenge tragedy.  

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6.  Eleanor Rigby – The quiet existential lament for the inevitability of death.  That’s heavy stuff from the mop-tops who just a few years before sang about wanting to holing some girl’s hand.  The band managed to turn their most desolate ballad into their most humane song.  Essentially, “Eleanor Rigby” is a two minute distillation of the entire corpus of Samuel Beckett, from the howling loneliness of Krapp’s Last Tape to the abject bleakness of Endgame. But instead of allowing poor Eleanor to stand in for the futility of the human condition, McCartney keeps us grounded in the character.  The life of quiet desperation is Eleanor’s entirely; it just happens to reflect our lives.  

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And here’s the next five in what is No Genre’s quest to determine once and for all his (its?) favorite Beatles songs.

15.  Tell Me Why – I love The Beatles’ early material because of this nacent punk rock attitude that seems to simmer right below the surface of some of their songs.  ”Tell Me Why” borrows the structure of girl group doo-wop but subverts it with Lennon’s wounded/angry rasp.  

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14.  A Hard Day’s Night – This is a classic example of the lyrical content of The Beatles’ early material being completely incidental to the song’s greatness.  The sound of Lennon and McCartney trading gritty vocals never gets old.  But what really sells the song is Ringo’s frantic percussion: bongos, snare, kick drum, cowbell, and more cymbals than you could ever need.  This thing stomps so hard at the lower end that Ringo threatens to blow the bottom out of the song.  Plus, the song opens with the most widely debated chord in all of rock n roll and behind the ending chord of “A Day in the Life” the second most famous chord in The Beatles’ career.  

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13.  When I’m Sixty-Four – Another one of McCartney’s cutesy valentines.  But you’d have to be astoundingly hard-hearted not to be touched by this little charmer.  

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12.  Help! – One of the earliest instances of a superstar complaining about his or her fame.  But the trick of “Help!” is that Lennon is able to sell his meteoric rise as a burden that doesn’t just alienate, it hollows him out.  In a sense, this is the most honest song Lennon ever wrote, no small feat considering his bracingly candid output.  

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11.  Rain – There’s something about beautiful wall of sound of “Rain” that gets me every time.  There were a ton of radical production techniques used on the track: backwards vocals, varying recording speeds, a host of overdubs, tricky tempo changes.  The song never sounds like an production experiment, though.  McCartney’s bass is dancing wildly around the mix and Ringo’s drumming is inventive and Harrison’s snaky lead weaves between everything stealthily.  

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And we continue our march toward our favorite Beatles song.

20.  Hello, Goodbye – The psychedelic Beatles are certainly my least favorite aspect of their career.  I’m generally allergic to any pantheistic one-world group hugs by any band, but when the Beatles fakes the ending of this song and come storming back with an absolutely gigantic coda I’m filled with indescribable sense of species consciousness.  If only all hippie psychedelia was this cogent . . .  

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19.  Revolution – While the slower, horn-blasted version on The White Album has its charms, it’s the scorched-earth version released as a single that is justifiably lauded.  Between that nasty, gnarled lead guitar line and Ringo’s oddly muted drumming, the song is a swaggering monk looking for an congregation.  Lennon, of course, towers above it all from his perch on his high horse, a righteous prince of peace hollering about hellfire and brimstone and mutual understanding between everyone.  Peace never sounded so badass.  

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18.  Happiness is a Warm Gun – When Trainspotting was released in 1996, there were fears that the film glorified the desperation of heroin addiction.  Danny Boyle had nothing on “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” a song that makes shooting horse sound like taking a warm bath.  The wild three-part structure of complicated polyrhythms (at some point Ringo falls back into 4/4 while the rest of the boys cruise along at 6/8) crams everything from a nightmarish search for a fix to a doo-wop send-up.  

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17.  Something – For a tender love song, there sure is a lot of doubt that bubbles up in the tumbling middle section:  ”You’re asking me will my love grow/I don’t know/I don’t know.”  Harrison doesn’t sound any more confident in the next line: “If you stick around, it may show/I don’t know/I don’t know.”  The evolution of the Beatles was always toward increasing sophistication and nuance, and “Something” complicates the love song paradigm that they mastered earlier in the decade.  

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16.  Dear Prudence – The story behind “Dear Prudence” sounds like something out of the Belle and Sebastian backstory.  Prudence, the fanatical sister of Mia Farrow, who accompanied The Beatles to India, spent her time in near constant meditation and Lennon wrote the song to coax her out of her spiritual reverie.  He wanted to remind her that there was still a world beyond the inner one she was getting in touch with.  But what makes the song is the fantastic back tracking that accompanies Lennon’s gentle plea to Prudence.  Between McCartney’s insistent bass work and heavy percussion and the complimentary guitar duel between Lennon and Harrison, “Dear Prudence” is a formally inventive song that never sounds dated.  

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To celebrate iTunes’ acquisition of The Beatles’ catalog, I thought I’d share my favorite (not best or most important) songs by the Fab Four.  I’ve capped myself at a manageable twenty-five, and I will present them in 5 short installments over the next week or so.  As always, comments and complaints are welcome

Caveat Emptor:  You’ll notice pretty quickly that I’m predominantly a McCartney man.  To my ear, he had the best sense of melody and narrative and emotional nuance.  While Harrison could be lovely and disquieting and Lennon could move primal parts deep inside of you, McCartney has always most closely resembled my sentimental heart.  In a lot of ways, Lennon was the braver songwriter in that he could tap into something really deep within himself to express his anguish or his confusion, but McCartney’s formal sophistication has always held my attention longer than Lennon’s guttural yearnings.  That is to say, if you’re a Lennon acolyte, you’re likely to be a bit irritated by the list.

Let’s get started, shall we?

25.  Baby, You’re a Rich Man – So many contradictory touches in this song:  Lennon’s soft falsetto erupting into his blaring yowl, the clavioline snaking its way around the song, the fat, matter-of-fact piano chords.  If this song we’re so convincing about the power of counterpointing and juxtaposition, it might be a mess of failed experiments.  

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24.  Dig a Pony – The confident swagger that just radiates off this thing is unbelievable.  Lennon is content to let it stutter and stop and break into a tumbling avalanche of cymbals and then halt the whole goddam thing in its tracks again.  

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23.  Long, Long, Long – Coming on the heels of the scorching “Helter Skelter,” “Long, Long, Long” is a welcome respite from the noise: a ambient organ quietly accompanies Harrison’s preternaturally soothing voice.  A vastly underrated song.  

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22.  Got to Get You Into My Life – A sizzling Stax tribute to weed that features some of McCartney’s finest vocals.  For as many times as McCartney has been arrested for possession, it’s not surprising that one of his best pure pop songs is about seriously jonesing for some dank.  

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21.  Don’t Pass Me By – Far and away Ringo’s best contribution to the band’s catalog.  Poor guy.  Always relegated to the goofiest, corniest songs.  But “Don’t Pass Me By” is a beaut:  a hairy, loose-limbed country jaunt featuring a wonderful fiddle hot-stepping all over the place.

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