Beatles News
A list of 50 terrible songs on otherwise great, classic albums, from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Harry Styles and Taylor Swift
Illustration featuring music artists
There’s always one. It’s that single track on a great record that sucks to such a profound degree that it almost feels like a sick joke. They exist for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes the lead singer felt obligated to give the drummer one song on Side Two to maintain group harmony. Other times, they took ludicrous amounts of drugs and the idea of having a dog howl for 134 seconds or banging a metal cross against guitar strings for a solid minute and a half felt like a grand plan. And other times, they’re just desperate for a hook and wind up stealing one from a Corn Flakes jingle and placing the shitty tune on the same Beatles album as “A Day in the Life.”
We combed through music history and came up with 50 terrible songs that taint otherwise perfect records. It’s likely that a great many of you will disagree with at least some of these picks. That may be because you’ve heard some of these records so many times that it’s hard to imagine them in any other form. But does Goodbye Yellow Brick Road really benefit from “Jamaica Jerk Off”? Does Synchronicity truly need a song where Andy Summers rants like a lunatic about his overbearing mother? Did Phil Collins really need to deliver “Illegal Alien” with a heavy Spanish accent?
It should be noted that these weren’t always easy calls. The White Album posted particularly vexing questions due to polarizing tracks “Rocky Racoon,” “Good Night,” “Revolution 9,” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” We didn’t go with any of those songs, and we have little doubt many of you won’t agree with the pick. Likewise, we just couldn’t get with the conventional wisdom that “Treefingers” brings down Radiohead’s “Kid A,” and “La La Love You” has no business appearing on the Pixies’ “Doolittle.” We like both of those songs. The list is ranked from least worst to flat-out worst. If you disagree with us there or on any of our other picks, take to social media and blast us to pieces. We can take it.
Source: au.rollingstone.com
'It’s an honor and a pleasure,' the Beatles drummer said. Ringo Starr is about to mark a new career first.
The 84-year-old musician and drummer for The Beatles was recently invited to make his debut at the Grand Ole Opry House as it marks its 100th Anniversary celebration.
While performing the first of two sold-out shows at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Jan. 14 in support of his new country album Look Up, Starr received a special invitation from Opry member Emmylou Harris.
While Harris joined Starr on stage, she asked if the legendary musician would give his first-ever Grand Ole Opry performance next month.
After pretending to mull over the decision, Starr gladly agreed, stating, "I’d love to. It’s an honor and a pleasure. Thank you."
"What an honor that after all the extraordinary music he has made and all the incredible history he’s been a part of, Ringo Starr will be making his Opry debut during this, the Opry’s milestone 100th year," Opry Executive Producer Dan Rogers said in a statement to Parade. "It’s going to be a night like no other."
Source: Carly Silva/parade.com
In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
A star-studded and historic 50th anniversary special of "Saturday Night Live" ended with Paul McCartney performing the famous medley of songs that ended the Beatles' last-recorded album, "Abbey Road," on Sunday.
The sketch comedy series, known for featuring up-and-coming comics, celebrity hosts and musicals, began and ended with musical performances. Modern pop star Sabrina Carpenter and Paul Simon opened the show with a rendition "Homeward Bound," a song Simon first sand with another Beatle, George Harrison, on "SNL" in 1976.
The show lasted for more than three hours and featured guest appearances that included Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Bad Bunny, Bill Murray, Jason Sudeikis, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ryan Reynolds, Pete Davidson, Miley Cyrus, Steve Martin, David Spade, Cecily Strong, Martin Short, Drew Barrymore, Jimmy Fallon, Ayo Edeberi, Pedro Pascal, Lil Wayne and Adam Sandler.
Sandler, who was a cast member in the 1990s, performed one of his famous comedy songs celebrating the anniversary.
With many of the cast members and guests gathering for the anniversary special, the "SNL 50: The Anniversary Celebration" is considered the largest TV reunion in history.
In the end, the show paid its ultimate tribute to Lorne Michaels, the show's creator and long-time showrunner.
"The man who made all our dreams come true, Lorne Michaels!" Short said in the show's final scene.
Source: nbcnewyork.com/Brendan Brightman
Rock and roll has its fair share of love stories, but few are as dramatic as the one between Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and Pattie Boyd. This wasn’t just a love triangle — it involved friendship, heartbreak, music, and even voodoo rituals. Let’s see how two of the most famous guitarists in history fell for the same woman. Pattie Boyd, a model and photographer, met George Harrison in the early 1960s. She was dating a photographer named Eric Swayne at the time, but she eventually ended that relationship to be with Harrison.
The couple got married on January 21, 1966, in a ceremony where Paul McCartney was the best man. But their marriage started to fall apart due to Harrison’s substance abuse and repeated affairs. One of these affairs reportedly involved Ringo Starr’s wife, and it became a turning point in the relationship.
Boyd and Harrison separated in 1974, and by 1977, they were officially divorced. While Harrison and Boyd were married, Eric Clapton became good friends with Harrison. He spent a lot of time with the couple and soon fell in love with Boyd.
Clapton sent an anonymous love letter signed ‘E.’ to Pattie, hoping she would realize his feelings. Clapton was also engaged to a woman named Alice at that time and having an affair with Pattie’s younger sister, Paula.
Source: metalheadzone.com
The Beatles were the greatest band of the 20th century, so it’s not exactly surprising that a few myths, legends, and rumors would follow the Fab Four through the years. Some of these rumors spread like wildfire, and all of them are false. That is, except for one myth that can’t really be explained. Let’s mythbust a few legendary Beatles myths, shall we?
1. “Paul is Dead”
This is the Beatles myth of Beatles myths. Back in the day, a rumor spread like wildfire that Macca himself was killed in a car accident in 1967. The band was enormous at the time and only getting bigger, so naturally, it makes sense that the band and their management would fabricate a lookalike to take his place. Some fans even picked apart The Beatles’ music for evidence of the switch, with some claiming that John Lennon reveals McCartney’s fate in the song “I’m So Tired”.
This myth is obviously false, but it’s a fascinating look into how obsessed music fandoms can get. In 1993, McCartney even released a live-recorded LP titled “Paul Is Live” as a humorous reference to the rumor.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Em Casalena
Casual fans of The Beatles probably know “Eight Days a Week.”
It appears at the midway point of their fourth album, Beatles for Sale. The song fits with the group’s early period pop on an album where The Beatles began to experiment. “Eight Days a Week” begins with its intro fading in—unheard of at the time for a pop song.
But The Beatles had become restless. Their comfort in the recording studio showed in how they manipulated its technology. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, inspired by Bob Dylan, aimed for something higher than the charts. And a new writing style emerges immediately on Beatles for Sale with the opening track, “No Reply.”
The song describes Lennon trying to reach an unfaithful girlfriend. Though his songwriting had evolved, he drew inspiration from an older song. Lennon adapted his song from The Rays’ 1957 R&B hit “Silhouettes.” He said, “It was my version of ‘Silhouettes’: I had that image of walking down the street and seeing her silhouetted in the window and not answering the phone, although I never called a girl on the phone in my life. Because phones weren’t part of the English child’s life.”
This happened once before
When I came to your door
No reply
They said it wasn’t you
But I saw you peep through your window
“Silhouettes” gave Lennon a blueprint for his story. It marked a turn toward the kind of detailed narratives in Dylan’s songwriting. The Beatles’ publisher, Dick James, said to Lennon, “That’s the first complete song you’ve written where it resolves itself.”
Here’s the opening verse to The Rays’ song for comparison:
Took a walk and passed your house late last night
All the shades were pulled and drawn way down tight
From within the dim light cast
Two silhouettes on the shade
Oh, what a lovely couple they made
Source: americansongwriter.com/Thom Donovan
It is considered one of The Beatles' finest tracks
The Beatles were never afraid to cause controversy. John Lennon infamously declared in 1966 that the band were "more popular than Jesus", which was met with outcry by American Christians and played a part in The Beatles' retirement from touring at the end of that year.
They also had a number of songs banned by various radio stations. Among them were 'A Day in the Life', which was banned by the BBC for its supposed references to drugs, and 'The Ballad of John and Yoko', which was banned by some radio stations in the United States due to its references to Christ.
That did not stop once John, Paul , George Harrison and Ringo Starr went their separate ways in 1970 either. The ECHO recently looked at how the Paul McCartney & Wings track 'Hi, Hi, Hi' was banned by the BBC, which believed its lyrics made reference to sex and drugs.
One of John's most famous Beatles songs received the same treatment. 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun' was written by John in 1968 and credited to Lennon-McCartney, like all of his and Paul's compositions for the band.
The song began with the title, which John had seen in the May 1968 edition of American Rifleman magazine. It was the headline of an article by Warren W. Herlihy about teaching his son to shoot.
About his initial reaction to it, John said: "I just thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something."
The song featured on the November 1968 'White Album', the sessions for which were notoriously tempestuous as artistic differences developed between the band. However, they all worked together to put the complex track together.
When writing it, John said he combined "three sections of different songs", covering a range of themes. Parts of the finished product were perceived to be about drugs and sex when 'The White Album' was released - the titular 'warm gun' was seen to represent John's sexual desire for Yoko Ono and it was banned by the BBC and other commercial radio stations as a result.
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
Now And Then: The Rapture Of Another Paul McCartney Valentine’s Day Underplay 10 Years Later
At first it seemed completely random. A Tuesday in February, and Paul McCartney was, for some reason, playing a surprise show at the 575-capacity Manhattan venue Bowery Ballroom. Then there was a Wednesday show. And, finally, a Friday special edition, a Valentine’s Day finale to cap off a week of Macca taking over downtown Manhattan before joining in with this weekend’s SNL 50 festivities.
Somehow, this is not the first solo Valentine’s Day I’ve spent watching McCartney play a tiny Manhattan club. Ten years ago, he did something similar, a sneak attack Irving Plaza gig before SNL’s fortieth anniversary. These are the only two times I’ve seen McCartney, and back then it was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience I thought, reasonably, none of us would have again. Yet if a maybe slightly over capacity Irving Plaza felt intimate 10 years ago, this was a whole other thing. Bowery Ballroom is less than half the size of Irving. You couldn’t be anywhere in the room without having some sense of “Whoa, that’s Paul McCartney right there.”
While the decade-long gap might’ve had me thinking about where all the time had gone, the legend 50 years my senior didn’t show any of that. As far as I can recall, 82-year-old Paul was just as spry and boyishly excitable as 72-year-old Paul. The energy in the venue was, as you might expect, also a kind of childlike wonder, a disbelief that any of us had made it into that room. Somewhere along the line, McCartney compared it to his early days, playing the Cavern in Liverpool.
Source: stereogum.com/Ryan Leas
Songwriters often subconsciously reveal things that even they don’t realize. In some cases, it takes an outside source to put a finger on it, maybe somebody within your own band who knows you better than anybody else.
In the case of “Good Morning Good Morning,” John Lennon, the song’s chief writer for The Beatles, didn’t explain that it might have come from his own deep-seated frustrations with his daily life. But after the fact, his songwriting partner Paul McCartney made the connection.
“Morning” Has Broken
If you judge whether something is a concept album or not by interconnected songs or a running narrative, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band doesn’t really make the grade. The masterful 1967 album only really holds up in that regard for the first two and last two songs, when Sgt. Pepper’s band addresses the audience.
But the songs do share thematic connections. Many of them deal with the routine ephemera of everyday life, at least in lyrical terms. The music, so wondrous and inspired, then takes those slice-of-life stories and renders them all indelibly magical.
“Good Morning Good Morning” was inspired by the slogan in a cereal commercial. In interviews after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon dismissed his song as inessential. But Paul McCartney, as he explained to biographer Barry Miles, heard in its lyrics Lennon’s dissatisfaction with the tedium of his first marriage:
“John was feeling trapped in suburbia and was going through some problems with Cynthia. It was about his boring life at the time—there’s a reference in the lyrics to ‘nothing to do’ and ‘meet the wife’; there was an afternoon TV soap called Meet the Wife that John watched, he was that bored, but I think he was also starting to get alarm bells.”
Source: newsbreak.com/Jim Beviglia
Ringo Starr may be known as one of the most successful musicians to have ever lived, but there is one role he took on during his extraordinary career that fans may be less aware of.
The Beatles legend achieved international success drumming with the Fab Four. As a solo artist Ringo has released twenty studio albums and sold millions of records. Included on the long list of achievements the 84-year-old can boast is his connection to one of the most famous children's TV shows.
Ringo was the first narrator for Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. He narrated the first and second series and played Mr. Conductor in the first series of Shining Time Station.
The Dingle native left his role on the show to focus on his solo career, leaving in 1990 to tour with the All Starr band. After which he was replaced by Michael Angelis in the UK and George Carlin in the US. In 2009, he returned to voice Thomas in The Official BBC Children in Need Medley.
On February 4, a post uploaded by Facebook group 'Classic Memory Lane", showed the Beatle posing in front of the tank engines in their model form. The post has achieved plenty of engagement with over 40,000 likes and over 1,000 comments. Many fans were surprised to find out the forgotten role the drummer had, while others reminisced and remembered the memories....
Source: uk.news.yahoo.com/Courtney Eales
