Tag Archives: The Beatles

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Song of the Day #506: ‘Please Please Me’ – The Beatles

I started these Beatles weekends with the first track from their first album — ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ on Please Please Me. I’ve since dedicated a week to every Beatles album (with the exception of the lame Yellow Submarine) so I’m circling back around to again focus on their debut.

The band famously recorded the whole album in just under ten hours, essentially capturing on tape the live show they’d been performing for months in the Cavern Club (that’s where they racked up those 10,000 hours of practice Malcolm Gladwell writes about in Outliers). Six of the songs were covers while the eight originals made it clear right out of the gate that Lennon and McCartney were expert songwriters.

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Song of the Day #500: ‘Twist and Shout’ – The Beatles

Here I am at my 500th Song of the Day. Haven’t missed a single day for nearly a year and a half. I admit there are times when I wonder if I can keep this going for very much longer but then I stop and think about dozens of songs and artists I haven’t been able to cover yet and I realize that the SOTD series will certainly never die for lack of material. If it dies, it will be because I give up. And I don’t give up easy.

I considered finding some meaningful song to position in this spot to mark the occasion, but I couldn’t come up with anything. And because I was featuring Beatles cover songs this weekend, I figured their most famous one is certainly worthy of the spot.

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Song of the Day #499: ‘You Really Got a Hold On Me’ – The Beatles

The Beatles are so well known for the songs they wrote than it’s easy to dismiss their early cover work. On three of their first four albums, covers make up about half of the track lists, with the Fab Four trying their hand at everything from rock to country to show tunes.

A few of those covers are so successful that they’ve become Beatles classics in their own right. ‘Baby It’s You,’ ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ and ‘Devil in Her Heart’ are three that jump to mind. Today and tomorrow I’ll highlight the two that really rise to the top.

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Song of the Day #493: ‘I’m a Loser’ – The Beatles

imaloserAfter ‘What You’re Doing,’ my favorite song on Beatles For Sale is John Lennon’s ‘I’m a Loser.’ Lennon dressed up his famously low self esteem in a song about a failed relationship but really about his own insecurities.

Lennon was paying a lot of attention to Bob Dylan at the time, and this is the first of his songs that makes that influence clear (it would become more clear with ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ on the band’s next album).

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Song of the Day #492: ‘Eight Days a Week’ – The Beatles

eighdaysThe Beatles’ fourth album, Beatles For Sale, has the dubious honor of being my least favorite of the band’s releases. Nestled between A Hard Day’s Night and Help! with half of its tracklist dedicated to covers, it never really stood a chance.

But, as the saying goes, the worst Beatles album is still better than most of what’s out there. And Beatles For Sale certainly has its share of great songs.

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