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Jul 25, 2014, 09:59AM

The 10 Worst Beatles Songs

Paul McCartney, take a bow.

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The Beatles were my favorite band at one time, and the White Album the top release. My enthusiasm has waned over the years; I still think the band is fabulous, but I doubt I'd rate them above Sly and the Family Stone, as just one example. Nor would the White Album be my pick for best album ever—I don't think any Beatles album would even make my Top Ten. That's because, despite a mountain of hype, the truth is that the band never quite made a perfect record; everything they recorded from Sgt. Pepper’s on, is marred by at least one or two tracks of cutesy schlock and/or failed experimentation. As evidence, here are the 10 worst Beatles songs of all time, from the merely mediocre to the truly awful

"Revolution 9"

John Lennon was supposedly inspired by "Hymnen," but "Revolution Number 9" is crabbed in comparison to Stockhausen's range of assaultive sounds and silences. "Revolution 9" is good for a giggle or two, but overall it comes across as a mildly interesting curiosity rather than a work of genius, much less successful than VU's contemporaneous efforts to combine rock and the avant garde.

"Do You Want to Know a Secret?"

Hardly a tune for the ages. Lennon, the primary composer, reaches for the innocent effervescence of the girl groups the Beatles adored, but he can't quite catch their purity or, for that matter, their knowingness. The result verges on Pat-Boone-like parody. George Harrison's treacly vocals don't help matters; you can just see him mugging at each "Whoa, oh, oh."

"All You Need Is Love"

Again, this could easily be worse, but it still sucks. The bloated orchestration is a poor substitute for the Beatles’ own playing, which can save even annoying Paul McCartney nothings like "Hello, Goodbye," (also from Magical Mystery Tour). Most of all, John's hippie dippy message of universal music hall love has dated badly. 

"Let It Be"

Most of the Beatles' worst stinkers are Paul's fault. This is a case in point; "Let It Be" has some nice playing from the band as it goes along but the maudlin-philosophizing-over-earnest-piano opening is hard to recover from. It's clear from this song why Billy Joel was a fan.

"Eleanor Rigby"

Say what you will about the Beatles, but George Martin is really not a genius; the band's reliance on him resulted in way too many songs that sounded like Muzak. The supposedly existential lyrics here come across as glib. "All the lonely people, where do they all come from." I don't know, man. Deep.

"Hey Jude"

Endless intolerable gush. Even if you argue that the song is somewhat redeemed because it prompted this accidental exercise in outsider art, it's still hard to forgive lines like "take a sad song and make it better," not to mention every one of those stupid "nah-nah-nah-nahs."

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

George's thin voice nattering would-be profundities like "With every mistake we must surely be learning" while Eric Clapton provides a guitar solo as self-mythologizing indulgence. It's a shame that this is so well known, while better Harrison efforts like the melancholy "If I Needed Someone" are relatively obscure.

"Michelle"

The hokey pokey “Michelle” is supposed to be affectingly naïf, but instead comes across as calculated smarm. Rarely has French sounded less sexy; somewhere Serge Gainsbourg was dry-heaving.

"She's Leaving Home"

Similar to "Eleanor Rigby" in the banality of the orchestral backing, but down-rated further for even more sentimental dreck. The counter-culture generation-gap narrative pulled from the headlines of the Daily Mail must have seemed relevant at the time, but in retrospect it comes across as exploitive, dumb, and time-bound.

"Yesterday"

Paul solo with string quartet; this launched more than 2000 cover versions and was voted the best song of the 20th century in a BBC radio 2 poll, as well greatest pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone. Which just goes to show that people love banal melody and indifferent singing if it's coupled to sufficiently blatant nostalgia.

"The Long and Winding Road"

Paul was outraged by Phil Spector's bombastic overdubs, and he had a point; in its original form the song is just a run of the mill crappy Paul ballad, but Spector's interference pushes it into extra-special heights of gloppy wretchedness. That didn't stop it from being a U.S. hit of course; an embarrassing moment for Paul, for Spector, and for the American public.

—Follow Noah Berlatsky on Twitter: @hoodedu

Discussion
  • Can't argue with "Michelle" and "Long and Winding Road." But "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" jumps out at you, and Clapton's playing (a favor to George) is hardly self-aggrandizing. And I assume your Sly reference was to be provocative.

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  • I mean, I think Sly and the Family Stone is better than the Beatles, probably. Certainly "There's a Riot Goin' On" is better than any Beatles album; Riot is just about perfect, front to back, and no Beatles album is.//Sly Stone is arguably as influential as the Beatles too; he was really a remarkable musician and performer, with a really amazing band. It's kind of a scandal that he doesn't get more respect.

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  • Loved Sly, and yes, incredibly influential band. Too short-lived, unfortunately. But more influential than the Beatles? No. Not musically, and obviously not culturally.

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  • Musically, radio currently has a ton more to do with Sly than with the Beatles. If you're looking mostly at white rock, then obviously the Beatles are bigger, but if you're coming from funk/disco/current R&B/hip hop, it's Sly all the way.// If by "culturally" you mean the Beatles were more popular, then I can't deny that.

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  • The thing about WMGGW is that Clapton's solo is what makes it, and McCartney's piano intro. The Harrison solo demos show why John & Paul probably didn't think much of it. But the White Album version does not belong on any worst list. Revolution 9 always shows up on them, despite being an accessible introduction to musique concrete and avant garde from the most popular band in the history of Western civilization. Pretty neat, and it's the climax of the White Album's pent up confusion and paranoia. I don't see "She's Leaving Home" as being particularly maudlin (the mono version - fuck the stereo version, too slow), and I think it's a great snapshot of the time as we know it in history. The rest? Agreed, except "All You Need is Love," which I can't listen to much, but I never hated. Overplayed. Had no idea Billy Joel loved "Let it Be," makes complete sense *barf*.

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  • Eleanor Rigby is great too, and the instrumentation is far from muzak, it's incredibly stark and restrained. Powerful song but also overplayed. "Girl," Lennon's "Michelle," is far superior.

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  • I don't know if Billy Joel liked "Let It Be"; I'm just guessing. He's a huge Beatle fan though.//I would suggest that a popular introduction to musique concrete maybe misses the point sufficiently to actually be a bad idea.

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  • Well, why the fuck did you write that Joel was a "Let it Be" fan, then. Of course, he was a huge Beatles fan; not exactly unique.

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  • Ah; I see. Wording is confusing. I meant it was clear from that song why Joel was a fan of the Beatles in general, not necessarily of that song in particular. Sorry about that.

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  • No, I don't mean just more popular. The Stones and Carole King and the Eagles, God help me, were more popular than Sly. But it was the Beatles who sped up the cultural revolution of the mid-60s. Beatles boots, Beatles movies, Beatles trading cards, Beatles cartoons. They transcended pop music, just as Babe Ruth transcended baseball.

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  • My thoughts exactly. Thanks for sparing me the Noah diatribe I'm sure will follow

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  • I think that's actually kind of all under "more popular."//Not really sure what "sped up the cultural revolution" means. Culture is always revolving, it seems like. The Beatles were really, really extremely popular, and were a multimedia phenomenon. It's always hard to say what exactly that means in terms of broader historical impact on things that are not pop culture. And of course it doesn't really have much to do with whether or not their music was good, bad, or indifferent.

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  • Does Noah Berlatsky have any credibility anymore? Nah-nah-nah-nah.

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  • You're missing the point, Noah. Culture usually evolves, not revolves. But as someone who witnessed this—and to be fair, you weren't yet born—the introduction of the Beatles to the US did speed up the 60s counterculture. One example: long hair. Instantly, teens wanted mop-tops, and that pit them against their parents. Sure, it would've happened eventually, but it wasn't the beatniks or folkies or Greenwich Village denizens who were responsible. It was the Beatles. Also, Paul's admission he took LSD and John's "We're bigger than Jesus" brouhaha were mainstream pop culture, societal moments.

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  • Noah, why didn't you just entitle the article, "The Beatles are overrated, especially Paul" and be done with it?

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  • Russ, the question is, does slightly longer hair really qualify as a significant historical change? I'm sure the Jesus thing was a big deal, but Miley's VMA performance was a big deal too. How much do these things matter exactly?//Again, it's somewhat beside the point of whether their music is worthwhile.//JoeS, I think the Beatles are kind of overrated...but John thought they were overrated too (thus the bemused comment about Jesus.) I do love them, though; they're a wonderful band, with many, many great songs and some great albums, even if they never quite managed to make an album without a stinker or two.

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  • who do you think has a better track record? PER track I mean... what's your flawless pick for record of the century?

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  • Noah, when you compare Miley and the VMA's to The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, you lose what credibility you previously had.

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  • And what credibility would that be?

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  • Nicky, I just relistened to Sly's There's a Riot Goin' On and Prince's Around the World in A Day recently, both of which I think are pretty perfect all the way through. //Texan and Christian, as I think I've said before, I really have no interest in credibility. The day I start worrying about credibility is the day I need to quit writing.

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  • Last to the party, I scanned the list and would have to agree with but one exception. Lyrics schmyrics, the WMGSM sound is terrific poppy melancholy, just the ticket for my taste. After tthe early Beatles white heat rush came all those Wallowers, the Long and Winding Hey Jude Yesterdays. Help! indeed,

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  • Noah, I guess an obvious suggestion is for you to do a list of recording artists who you think are better and/or more important than the Beatles

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  • Well, I really like the Beatles! And they were very important. // I think you could probably make a case for James Brown, Duke Ellington...

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  • For celebrity's sake, probably Diana and the Beatles. Musically? Billy Strayhorn/Duke, sure, Chuck Berry, Berry Gordy's crew, James Burton, lots more important to the sound, Beatles more important to Life, Look and People.

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  • You're losing steam, Noah. That's a paltry list in response to May's question.

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  • He could always do a piece on it. I think it would be interesting.

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