Addendum to BB's Beatles Album Rankings - Favorite songs
As part of my previous Beatles Album rankings post, I included what I considered the best (meaning my favorite) songs from each album. Here, as a follow-up to that post, I'm listing a tentative ranking of my overall favorite Beatles songs. This was, however, much more difficult than ranking the albums, as there are just so many great songs to consider and come up with an absolute favorites list. The Beatles are probably one of the only artists to have literally hundreds of great songs, and they produced all of them within a short seven year period. In addition, favorite songs tend to change more readily with time and circumstances, thus this list represents what I am thinking today, and would probably change if reconsidered next week, month, or year. Anyway, here is a list of my current top 25 favorite Beatles songs, as well as my bottom 5 least favorite songs.
Top 25 Favorite Beatles songs:
25. She's a Woman
24. Don't Let Me Down
23. In My Life
22. Two of Us
21. Help!
20. Cry Baby Cry
19. Eleanor Rigby
18. And I Love Her
17. A Hard Day's Night
16. I've Just Seen a Face
15. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
14. A Day in the Life
13. Ticket to Ride
12. Strawberry Fields Forever
11. Hey Bulldog
10. And Your Bird Can Sing
9. Paperback Writer
8. For No One
7. Penny Lane
6. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
5. Let It Be
4. Here Comes the Sun
3. Blackbird
2. Dear Prudence
1. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
And still, so many great songs that I love didn't make the list, like Hey Jude, Come Together, Revolution, Something, Yesterday, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, With a Little Help From My Friends, I am the Walrus, Daytripper, I Feel Fine, Rain, Here There and Everywhere, You Can't Do That, Drive My Car, Norwegian Wood, Things We Said Today, Got to Get You Into My Life, and so many others, but the list indicates songs that I like just a bit more, for whatever reason.
The bottom 5 (for me at least):
5. Helter Skelter
4. All Together Now
3. Why Don't We Do It in the Road?
2. What's the New MaryJane?
1. Blue Jay Way
(As mentioned in previous post, since Revolution 9 is not really a song and can't really be judged by same criteria as other songs, not fair to include it here - for the record, it is interesting as a sound collage, but is not something that should be included on a Beatles album, and yes, I almost always skip over it).
OK, that's my list (at least currently). What's your favorite (or least favorite) Beatles songs?
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Favorite Beatles Songs - Addendum to Beatles Album Ranking List
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7 comments:
I've been listening to the Claypool Lennon Delirium's cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" lately and that is jaundicing my personal list, but your list looks pretty good to me!
BEATLES ALBUMS Ranked in Order of preference
Top three can rotate according to mood(!) sometimes adding no.4 but it never makes number one! Similarly for no.5 can be rotated with the top 5 but it never makes number one!
1. Abbey Road (’69)
2. Revolver (66)
3. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (’67)
4. Rubber Soul (’65)
5. Let It Be (’70)
6. A Hard Day’s Night (’64)
7. Magical Mystery Tour (’67)
8. With The Beatles (’63)
9. Help (’65)
10. The White Album (’68)
11. Beatles For Sale (’64)
12. Yellow Submarine (’69)
13. Please Please Me (’63)
Order of the albums for me and for too many reasons to list, when I first heard them, when I first bought certain and where I feel they might 'live' now!
Great fun!
Now I gotta go write my singles list!? Hang on back inna minit!
Top Twelve No Particular Order
1.Oh Darling
2.If I Needed Someone
3.Sexy Sadie
4.Tomorrow Never Knows
5.I Feel Fine
6.Cry Baby Cry
7.Hey Bulldog
8.Doctor Robert
9.Savoy Truffle
10.I’ve Got A Feeling
11.And your Bird Can Sing
12.Fixing A Hole
I am frequently tempted to put Please Please Me at #1 — I love that album. Yes, I know it's not as "good" but it was my first and I was hitting puberty and Twist and Shout in particular rocked my world. I certainly think it's better than For Sale or With, which is PPM with a few rough edges sanded off; as an album, it beats Help, even though Help has several better parts to it. So, off the top of my head:
1. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band
2. Revolver
3. Abbey Road
4. Please Please Me
5. The White Album
6. Rubber Soul
7. Magical Mystery Tour
8. With The Beatles
9. Let It Be
10. A Hard Day's Night
11. Help
12. Yellow Submarine
13. With the Beatles
Hey, what about Live at the Hollywood Bowl? Live at the BBC? 1? I know, I know ... I just love them still.
Um, me again because I obviously meant #13 to be Beatles For Sale
With so many more songs than albums, it was only natural that the likelihood for disagreement would increase.
Call me uncritical, but I love 97% of the stuff they recorded. Finding a track I actively dislike takes some doing. The sound collage of "Revolution #9" probably comes closest.
Favorites? "She Loves You", "You Can't Do That", their cover of "You Really Got a Hold on Me", "Rain", Ticket to Ride", "Hey Jude", "Get Back", "Savoy Truffle", "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and my Monkey", "Things We said Today", "Old Brown Shoe", "Carry That Weight/Golden Slumbers/The End", their cover of "Twist and Shout", "Eleanor Rigby", "I Should Have Known Better", "Baby's in Black", "Nowhere Man", "And Your Bird Can Sing".
Wait. Is that too many? Agghhh!!! Like I said, 97%.
Opinions are like Assholes, everyone has one
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