All Beatles Songs Ranked
by Will
This guy ranked all the Beatles songs, with extensive explanations for all of them. I only looked a few pages and disagreed with him all over the place (“Good Day Sunshine” is not the fifth worst Beatles song, although that is hilarious to put it there) — but I respect his obsessive thoroughness. (via kottke)
If were to rank them, I’d put them all tied for number one except for “Mr. Moonlight” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and that is it.
Comments
“Good Day Sunshine” is easily in my bottom 5. It’s the others in the bottom there I take issue with! “Revolution 9″ and “Honey Pie” are no-brainers. But “She’s So Heavy” and “Old Brown Show” are not great, but not terrible. And even “Little Child” doesn’t deserve to be this low.
And I really like “You Know My Name (Now Look Up the Number)”!!!
I won’t even comment on the second lowest page, which has a lot of good songs.
My question is: how are “Doctor Robert” and “Taxman” rated that high?!?! They are awful. Particularly “Doctor Robert”. That’s maybe my rock bottom least favorite.
Doctor Robert is kinda boring, but the guitars sound very cool — happy and bright and ringing. Taxman I agree I’ve always disliked.
I guess I like the harmonies in Good Day Sunshine in the chorus. Or maybe I’m a sentimental one thousand year old man?
I Am The Walrus is number 2?
Goo goo ga WRONG.
Also, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) is not as bad as this list indicates.
I agree, I’d rank all Beatles songs at #1 except for “Mr. Moonlight.” Even then, I don’t think it’s bad. I do like “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” though.
- Achilles
It’s insane how good the Beatles’ catalog is. But the second page you’re already into solidly good songs. They’re really unrankable in terms of goodness. It’d be easier to take the good songs and rank them in terms of ambition or scale, maybe.
Like A Day In The Life is impressive because of the orchestration, length and melding of two songs — but isn’t, say, I Want To Hold Your Hand a better constructed song? Certainly a better constructed pop song in terms of accessibility.
All of the songs are too good and should not be ranked and maybe never even listened to on account of being too good.
this guy completely overlooked Free As A Bird.
The Beatles suck.
I kind of feel like if you put all the Beatles tracks into a random list generator, you could make a case for any list it spit out.
This guy has “Julia” near the bottom and “Octopus’s Garden” near the top—that’s pretty close to random.
What Tanouye said. Also, She’s Leaving Home is Number 3???? It’s a good song, and spoke really well to the zeitgeist or the welschmertz or the Ring Dings of the time, but it’s not one I’d put that high up, just because it never comes up in my “you know what I’d like to hear that I haven’t heard in ages?” brain.
Whenever the Beatles come up, I always think three things.
1) How lucky I was to be alive (though just a wee thing) when they happened for the first time. It was incredible.
2) Mrs. Kelly, my third grade teacher, please give me back my Beatles card collection that you confiscated because it would probably be worth thousands of dollars now.
3) The last guitar riff on “You Can’t Do That” on the “Hard Day’s Night” album is one of the best album closers ever.
Yeah, the worst song on “Sgt. Pepper” is definitely NOT the #3 Beatles song of all time.
I guess I’m the only one who’s going to stick up for “Revolution #9″. Sure, even as sound collages go, it’s not the greatest, but it’s pretty awesome that the biggest band ever did it. Also, it’s not a song.
Hey Will, this guy forget to list that great Beetles song, Walk Like an Egyptian!!! Can you believe it?