I’ve mostly stuck to themes on these Beatles weekends, picking two songs from the same album, two songs by George Harrison, two sides of the same single, etc. This week I’m eschewing a thematic connection and just highlighting two great songs.
‘Blackbird’ has always been one of my favorite Beatles songs. I remember first becoming aware of it during the summer after my junior year in high school.
Usually, as with yesterday’s featured song, The Beatles gave Ringo a song to sing just to throw him a bone. You keep the beat for the rest of us, bloke, so here’s a few minutes in the spotlight.
But a couple of Beatles songs just wouldn’t be the same without Ringo on lead vocals. One is ‘Yellow Submarine,’ a corny trifle that’s perfect for Ringo because he sounds like he really means it… that’s a song aimed at 8-year-olds and it needed to be sung at their level. And I don’t mean that as an insult to Ringo. On the contrary, it’s kind of a gift.
It’s interesting that The Beatles have always been considered a true band, with every member as theoretically important as the others. This despite the fact that John and Paul wrote and performed 90% of their songs. Contrast them to The Rolling Stones, where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards share the spotlight and most people probably couldn’t name all the other members of the band. But everybody knows John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Ringo is certainly the main beneficiary of this. He wrote only a couple of the band’s songs and, while he’s certainly a fine and under-appreciated drummer, he’s not really the architect of The Beatles’ sound in any real way. His main contribution was his personality and considering the importance of the band’s image and performance outside the studio, that was no small matter.
Ben Folds once said that every band in the world formed by taking some piece of what The Beatles did and turning it into their own thing. According to his theory, The Beatles are the superset from which all popular music is derived.
It’s a good theory and one that’s easy to support when you listen to just about any modern pop or rock band. I’ve read a lot of praise of Radiohead recently, about how their output in the 00’s revolutionized popular music… but is there really anything on Kid A that doesn’t sound a little bit like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ ‘A Day in the Life’ or ‘Revolution 9?’ Give me a break.
It’s funny how now matter what Beatles song you pull up on YouTube or elsewhere on the Web, you’ll always find several people who consider it their favorite song.
I suppose, given the long tail of the World Wide Web, that’s the case with pretty much any song by any artist. I could probably post an obscure B-side by a band that put out one poorly-received album in the 90s and find somebody who wants it played at his funeral.
But when it comes to The Beatles, I can understand it. Just about every one of their songs is worthy of being somebody’s favorite.
Meet Me In Montauk 