Beatles News
Every Beatles fan — and there are a lot of them, from casual to hardcore — has an opinion on when the Fab Four of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were at their best, from their mainstream pop success to their psychedelic era. Narrowed down from more than 200 recorded songs, we agreed on these top timeless tunes.
Read on for the complete list of our favorites, from best to, well, 50th best.
1. "A Hard Day's Night" (1964, A Hard Day's Night)
The Beatles 'A Hard Day's Night' album cover.
Parlophone
More than 50 years after this single hit the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, it's still nearly impossible to get any two people to agree on what chord that famous opening clang! actually is. But with one majestic, mysterious Rickenbacker distress call, the Beatles as we first met them on The Ed Sullivan Show four months earlier were gone. They'd grown up. The lads had become unwitting passengers on a speeding locomotive they'd never be able to disembark from, and the song's title hints at that weariness. It's right there in the opening scene of the 1964 film that bears the same name, as John, Paul, George, and Ringo are chased by a mob of screaming, ravenous fans. This isn't just a pop song, it's a cathartic cry for Help!
2. "A Day in the Life" (1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)
The Beatles, 'Magical Mystery Tour' album cover.
Capitol
The Beatles' chief songsmiths were on increasingly divergent creative paths, a fact driven home by their collaboration on the grand finale of their most ambitious project. Both men are singing about the most average of daily activities — reading the morning paper, catching a bus — yet these rituals are full of existential pain in John's verses, while Paul's bridge is a whimsical daydream. In less expert hands, the contrast might have felt clumsy. Instead, it's the perfect lead-up to that wild crescendo and last piano chord: a studio trick that echoes in the listener's ears long after the song has ended.
Source: By EW Staff and Kevin Jacobsen
They were the biggest band in the world, but they certainly weren’t above criticism. In fact, you could argue that The Beatles invited more scrutiny than their rock band peers. Because of their track record, much was expected them with each new song and album.
John Lennon was always a bit sensitive to that criticism, especially when he believed it was unwarranted or unfair. Occasionally, he came out swinging in interviews to defend himself and the group. That certainly was the case when it came to the “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” a song he penned that the band released in 1969 on their final studio album Abbey Road.
The Beatles did a ton to advance the art of lyric writing in pop and rock music. They were influenced by the early albums of Bob Dylan, an artist who proved the pop form could withstand adult themes and complex, personal writing. Because of their popularity, the Fab Four’s efforts to push their lyrical boundaries in turn influenced just about every other band and artist that competed with them in the ’60s.
John Lennon was responsible for much of this advancement. Songs like “In My Life,” “A Day in the Life,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” all of which are credited to Lennon/McCartney but were mostly composed by Lennon, proved how evocative and profound rock music verses and refrains could be, an effect only amplified by the incredible music around the words. (McCartney was no slouch himself in writing the stellar lyrics to songs like “Eleanor Rigby,” “She’s Leaving Home,” and “Blackbird.”)
But Lennon also began to feel that people were focusing a little bit too much on the words to his songs, to the point where he started writing purposely oblique lyrics to try to throw them off on tracks like “Glass Onion” and “I Am the Walrus.” It only proved his point when obsessive fans began finding “hidden meanings” in those songs and others like them that weren’t really there.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
When you think of John Lennon from The Beatles, you’re likely to picture him with his circular, wire-rimmed glasses.
But at times, he wore contact lenses, or at least he tried to. They kept pinging out of his eyes.
Why and what Lennon did to help his contacts stick is part history and part vision science.
As I propose in my paper, it also involved smoking a lot of pot.
Lennon didn’t like wearing glasses
Before 1967, Lennon was rarely seen in public wearing glasses. His reluctance to wear them started in childhood when he was found to be shortsighted at about the age of seven.
Nigel Walley was Lennon’s childhood friend and manager of The Quarrymen, the forerunner to The Beatles. Walley told the BBC,"He was as blind as a bat – he had glasses but he would never wear them. He was very vain about that."
In 1980, Lennon told Rolling Stone magazine,"I spent the whole of my childhood with […] me glasses off because glasses were sissy."
Even during extensive touring during Beatlemania (1963–66), Lennon never wore glasses during live performances, unlike his hero Buddy Holly.
Then Lennon tried contacts … ping! Roy Orbison’s guitarist Bobby Goldsboro introduced Lennon to contact lenses in 1963.
But Lennon’s foray into contact lenses was relatively short-lived. They kept on falling out – including while filming a comedy sketch, on stage (when a fan threw a jelly baby on stage that hit him in the eye) and in the pool.
Why? That’s likely a combination of the lenses available at the time and the shape of Lennon’s eye.
The soft, flexible contact lenses worn by millions today were not commercially available until 1971. In the 60s, there were only inflexible (rigid) contact lenses, of which there were two types. Large “scleral” lenses rested on the white of the eye (the sclera). These were partially covered by the eyelids and were rarely dislodged.
But smaller “corneal” lenses rested on the front surface of the cornea (the outermost clear layer of the eye). These were the type more likely to dislodge and the ones Lennon likely wore. Why did Lennon’s contact lenses regularly fall out? Based on the prescription for glasses he wore in 1971, Lennon was not only shortsighted, but had a moderate amount of astigmatism.
Astigmatism is an imperfection in the curvature of the cornea, in Lennon’s case like the curve of a rugby ball lying on its side. And it was Lennon’s astigmatism that most likely led to his frequent loss of contact lenses.
Source: deccanherald.com
The music world clamored for a Beatles reunion almost immediately following the group’s official breakup in 1970. When John Lennon died in 1980, that didn’t really slow the reunion fervor all that much, as folks hoped the three living members might once again play together on a live stage.
The Beatles Anthology project in 1995, which included studio recordings done by Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr in conjunction with old John Lennon demos, was as close as we’d ever come to witnessing a full-scale Beatles reunion. But eight years before, two of the three remaining members came together on a stage for a good cause, as Harrison and Starr performed together at the Prince’s Trust benefit concert in 1987. It almost didn’t happen, though, simply because of how wary the two men were of raising everyone’s expectations that a more substantial reunion might be in the offing.
In June 1986, a “birthday party” concert for the charity was held at Wembley Stadium, and it featured an all-star assortment of artists, including Paul McCartney. The event was such a success that another benefit concert was scheduled for the following year. In the wake of Live Aid just a few years earlier, rock and pop stars were certainly in the mood to participate in these types of events, since they could do a bit of philanthropy while also raising their profile.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
When you’re as prolific of recording artists as the Beatles, some sessions are bound to be less enjoyable than others, like the Beatles songs Ringo Starr said was the “worst track we ever had to record.” The divisive song was a Paul McCartney song he originally wrote for their eponymous ‘White Album.’ However, time constraints pushed it back to Abbey Road.
As difficult as the recording sessions were for Ringo, he could at least take solace in the fact that he wasn’t the only Beatle who felt that way. Ringo Starr Called This Song “The Worst Track”
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is the third track off the Beatles’ iconic 1969 record Abbey Road. The jangly, jaunty tune about a hammer-wielding murderer named Maxwell Edison has become one of the most easily recognizable tracks in the Beatles’ discography. Still, that doesn’t mean it was anything close to a hit with a band.
Paul McCartney’s song proved to be rather vexing for the rest of the Fab Four. This included drummer Ringo Starr, who told Rolling Stone in 2008 that the time they spent cutting the song was “the worst session ever. It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for f***ing weeks. I thought it was mad.”
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
When The Beatles started out they were famously recast by manager Brian Epstein as four boys next door, their suits and mop top haircuts quickly varnishing over their raw rock ‘n’ roll roots. As time moved on, however, those roots showed through – sometimes in unexpected ways.
Take ‘Sun King’. A classic moment from the band’s final album ‘Abbey Road’, it was initially called ‘Here Comes The Sun King’ – before having its title shortened, to avoid confusion with George Harrison’s classic ‘Here Comes The Sun’.
Very much a group effort, the root for ‘Sun King’ owes a debt to Fleetwood Mac, then in their blues rock phase. Perhaps the biggest band in the country at the time, The Beatles lifted aspects of the guitar sound on No. 1 single ‘Albatross’ and turned it into their own.
George Harrison commented in 1987: “At the time, ‘Albatross’ (by Fleetwood Mac) was out, with all the reverb on guitar. So we said, ‘Let’s be Fleetwood Mac doing ‘Albatross’, just to get going.’ It never really sounded like Fleetwood Mac… but that was the point of origin.”
The final vocal part borrows from a plethora of Romance languages, spoof words pilfered from Spanish, Portuguese, and beyond. Essentially meaningless, it goes:
“Quando para mucho mi amore de felice corazón Mundo paparazzi mi amore chicka ferdy parasol. Cuesto obrigado tanta mucho que canite carousel“
The phrase ‘chicka ferdy’ was a nod to their rebellious days as rock ‘n’ roll teens in Liverpool, and it carries a hidden meaning. John Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1969: “We just started joking, you know, singing ‘cuando para mucho.’ So we just made up… Paul knew a few Spanish words from school, you know. So we just strung any Spanish words that sounded vaguely like something.”
It took over 40 years for the true meaning of ‘chicka ferdy’ to emerge, though. Paul McCartney revealed the truth in a 2020 radio interview. “There was a thing in Liverpool that us kids used to do, which was instead of saying ‘fuck off’, we would say ‘chicka ferdy’, he explained. “We were thinking that nobody would know what it meant, and most people would think, ‘Oh it must be Spanish’, or something. But we got a little seditious word in there!”
He added: “We had a few words and phrases that if one of us said it, would amuse the others because it was like a secret code.”
Source: Robin Murray/clashmusic.com
Of all the songs that the BBC banned during the heyday of The Beatles, this particular ban is the most understandable. At the very least, it’s understandable in the context of the 1960s and what was considered taboo at the time.
This particular song that the BBC banned was “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” from The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” is one of the Fab Four’s most recognizable songs of their career. It was also one of their most thinly veiled references to the psychedelic drug LSD. The title of the song spells out “LSD”. The lyrics also make poetic connections to the substance, too. The BBC Ban of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” by The Beatles Was Understandable at the Time
“Picture yourself in a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and marmalade skies / Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly / A girl with kaleidoscope eyes” are just a few of many obvious references in the song.
Mentioning a psychedelic drug in a song wouldn’t make most people blush nowadays. Still, the BBC was pretty strict about banning such songs in the 1960s. One could listen to the lyrics of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and think it’s a simple, innocent song about a girl named Lucy.
John Lennon even fought back at the allegations that the song was about doing drugs. He said that the song was simply inspired by a picture his son Julian drew that portrayed his friend Lucy in a childlike surreal manner.
Lennon also said that the song was about his future wife, Yoko Ono. “It was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD,” said Lennon. “Until somebody pointed it out, I never even thought of it. […] The imagery was Alice in the boat. And also the image of this female who would come and save me. This secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko, though, and I hadn’t met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have.”
Source: Em Casalena/americansongwriter.com
The iconic British comedy musical film, “A Hard Day’s Night,” was released on this day in history, Aug. 11, 1964, and starred the Beatles in their first feature movie. The movie was released during the height of Beatlemania as well as the British Invasion, and “A Hard Day’s Night” is widely considered a classic, according to Britannica.com. It will mark its 60th anniversary in 2024.
The rock ‘n’ roll musical boasts catchy and classic Beatles tunes, including "Can’t Buy Me Love," "I Should Have Known Better," and the namesake "A Hard Day’s Night."
John Lennon wrote the song "A Hard Day's Night"; it credited to Lennon-McCartney and released on the movie soundtrack of the same name in 1964, according to the Beatles' official website.
Source: Erica Lamberg/yahoo.com
Cynthia Lennon and Yoko Ono didn't get along. Here's why Cynthia was unhappy with Ono after John Lennon's death.
Immediately after John Lennon’s death, Cynthia Lennon reluctantly let her son, Julian, visit Yoko Ono in New York. Julian was still a teenager, and Cynthia didn’t want him to travel alone. Still, she allowed him to do what he felt was necessary. While Julian enjoyed spending time with his younger brother, Sean, Cynthia felt that Ono treated him callously. Cynthia Lennon said Yoko Ono overlooked Julian Lennon after John Lennon died
When Julian arrived at the Dakota, Lennon and Ono’s building in New York, he found the apartment empty. Fred Seamen, Lennon’s personal assistant, took this opportunity to warn Julian about the visit.
“‘[Ono] will do anything to keep you in your place,’ he said. ‘Sean is the only person who matters to her. There’s simply no place for you in her world,’” Cynthia wrote in her book John. “Fred’s message was pretty brutal but it was proven absolutely true over the next weeks and months.”
Still, Ono was vulnerable with Julian when she saw him, admitting she didn’t know how to tell Sean about Lennon’s death. The older boy agreed to help. Julian Lennon was not a part of the statement about Lennon’s death.
Julian offered his advice to Ono on how to talk to Sean. In the end, though, they both sat down with him.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles were the greatest band of the 20th century. Their solo careers were each quite lucrative in their own right, even if most Beatles fans wouldn’t say they matched the power of their former band’s career. These six albums specifically were some of the best solo projects to come from each of the former Beatles members. Though, please keep in mind that this list is not tiered nor in order of greatness; each one of these Beatles solo projects is special for different reasons!
1. ‘All Things Must Pass’ by George Harrison
Many consider George Harrison to be the most underrated Beatle. After listening to his debut solo album, we’re inclined to agree. All This Must Pass is an incredible creative achievement from Harrison, and many would say it was his very best solo release. All he needed was to step away from the shadow of Paul McCartney and John Lennon to really shine on his own as a songwriter.
2. ‘Plastic Ono Band’ by John Lennon
The 1970 record Plastic Ono Band was a seething solo release from John Lennon. This whole album takes the listener on a journey of Lennon’s self-confrontations as he battles his inner demons, dreams, and preconceived notions of belief and faith. It’s considered one of the best solo projects by The Beatles’ frontman, and it’s hard to disagree with that.
Source: Em Casalena/americansongwriter.com
