Top 10 Beatles Tracks (According to Rolling Stone Magazine)
The complete article at the Rolling Stone Magazine site actually covers what they think are the 100 Greatest Beatles Songs (the image at right links to the article).
But just for you I have looked at what made the Top 10 and summarised them in the following table.
Interestingly the track that Rolling Stone Magazine rates as Number 1 was never released as a single and can only be found on the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club” album.
One thing about the Beatle’s music is that it never seems to get old or tired. Maybe it is just me or people of my generation but when a Beatle’s track comes on the radio it always seem fresh and bright and new even though I know it is over 40 years old.
Following are some of the notes from the Rolling Stone Magazine commentaries that accompany each of the Top 10 picks.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps: Inspired by the relativism principle of the I Ching, Harrison pulled a book off a shelf in his parents' house, opened it to an arbitrary page and wrote a lyric around the first words he saw, which turned out to be the phrase "gently weeps." (Its source might have been Coates Kinney's much-anthologized 1849 poem "Rain on the Roof," which includes the lines "And the melancholy darkness/Gently weeps in rainy tears.")
Come Together: "Come Together" was the final flicker of this rejuvenated spirit: It was the last song all four Beatles cut together.
Let It Be: Channeling the church-born soul of Aretha Franklin, Paul McCartney started writing "Let It Be" in 1968, during the White Album sessions. Aretha's cover of the song was released before the Beatles' version. McCartney's opening lines — "When I find myself in times of trouble/Mother Mary comes to me" — were based on a dream in which his own late mother, Mary, offered solace, assuring him that everything would turn out fine. "I'm not sure if she used the words 'Let it be,'" McCartney said, "but that was the gist of her advice."
Hey Jude: McCartney was visiting Cynthia after she and Lennon had broken up, and he was thinking of Julian on the drive over there. "I was going out in my car, just vaguely singing this song," McCartney said, "and it was like, 'Hey, Jules. . . .' And then I just thought a better name was Jude. A bit more country & western for me." The opening lines were "a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.'"
Something: He … gave the song to Joe Cocker, who recorded it first. When Harrison finally presented "Something" to the other Beatles, they loved it. John Lennon said "Something" was "the best track on the album." Paul McCartney called it the best song [Harrison has] written." "It took my breath away," producer George Martin later said, "mainly because I never thought that George could do it. It was tough for him because he didn't have any springboard against which he could work, like the other two did. And so he was a loner."
Yesterday: The tune that would go on to become the most covered song in history began as something called "Scrambled Eggs." It also began in a dream.
"It fell out of bed," Paul McCartney once said about the origins of "Yesterday." "I had a piano by my bedside, and I must have dreamed it, because I tumbled out of bed and put my hands on the piano keys and I had a tune in my head. It was just all there, a complete thing. I couldn't believe it. It came too easy."
I Want to Hold Your Hand: "I remember when we got the chord that made the song," John Lennon later said. "We had, 'Oh, you-u-u/Got that something,' and Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it! Do that again!' In those days, we really used to write like that — both playing into each other's noses." [For those interested, according to Wikipedia ‘the’ chord was E minor]
