28/02/2009

The Ten Worst Beatles Songs: The Popular Opinion

I earlier blogged my list of the ten worst Beatles songs. Ever critical of my own views, I decided to have a look round the web and see what other people think. It was surprisingly hard to find a decent number of lists, but I finally managed to come across two lists of all Beatles songs ranked here and here and various worst Beatles songs lists (here, here, here, here, here, here, here). The following is a list calculated on the basis of those lists. Very much in the spirit of Coca-Cola I'm keeping the exact scoring method secret (frankly, I can't be bothered to write it down); but trust me: I devised it beforehand.

10. "A Taste of Honey": Four words: "Doo doo n doo."

9. "Yellow Submarine": Democracy may work in real life, but you don't need it in the band. You can be fascists in the band - not everyone has to get a chance to sing.

8. "Honey Pie": Much has been made about hidden messages on The White Album, and I’ve got one for you that you may not know about. If you listen real closely to “Honey Pie,” you can actually hear the other three Beatles rolling their eyes as Paul sings.

7. "Hold Me Tight": Sounds like "Please Please Me" played sideways

6. "Here, There and Everywhere": Alongside the stunning, stinging LSD popcraft of the rest of the Beatles' best album, "Here, There and Everywhere" stands as the greatest argument for peer pressure of all.

5. "Hey Jude": Naaaa naaa naaaa na n'naa naaaaa... etc.

4. "Mr. Moonlight": There’s so much wrong with it, from the night club vibe to the cheesy organ, or the caveman-like drum before the title lyrics.

3. "Rocky Raccoon": Couldn’t this song have been combined with Bungalow Bill and ended with a shoot-out, killing everyone involved?

2. "Wild Honey Pie": "Wild Honey Pie" can't really be taken seriously as a song - it's probably more like an outtake that they decided to leave on The White Album either to fill it up or just confuse and annoy people. I'd say it's a little of both.

1. "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da": The best thing about it: Johns furious pounding of the piano at the beginning, no doubt an indication of what he wished he could do to Paul's face. The Worst: The horrible forced jolliness of the whole thing. The non-Paul members sound like they are being forced to play at gunpoint in the gulag.

Boy, had I guessed how much work this was going to be, I wouldn't have done it. All for you, my readers, all for you!

5 comments:

troy said...

One more full ranking, if you're interested. My bottom 10 are contained within this post:

http://kindewords.blogspot.com/2009/01/ranking-beatles-my-damn-self.html

I'm with you on Taste of Honey, and it looks like we're not far apart on Here, There and Everywhere. The discrepancies, I'll chalk up to taste, except for your ranking of Hey Jude, which I'll chalk up to taste, there's just no accounting for.

LemmusLemmus said...

Troy, I just calculated this list from other people's lists, so it doesn't reflect my own taste (except for the three cases in which I used my own taste as a tiebreaker). For my own worst list, see the first link. "Here, There and Everywhere" would probably be in top 20 of best songs.

troy said...

My apologies for misreading. I like your list better, although what struck me is that they're largely the unremarkable songs. Most rankers, myself included, went with some popular stuff that for some reason we just can't *stand*. Perhaps you did too, and the mediocrity is a coincidence. The exception is Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and again, even if I put Fool on the Hill and Hello, Goodbye much further down, I respect your opinion. And at least you didn't list Hey Jude. Thanks for saving me the time reading the ones who did ...

LemmusLemmus said...

Re-read the intro; it wasn't actually that clear. Clarified now.

John Althouse Cohen said...

You mean there are people who don't rank "Hey Jude" as one of the best?