Someone called Bill Wyman has ranked all the Beatles songs; see the link at the bottom of this post. Turns out its not THAT Bill Wyman, but an American critic who shares the name. He clearly likes a list – is he perchance an Afterworder?
Some right old nonsense in here, it has to be said. I think we can all agree that Good Day Sunshine isn’t the very worst track recorded by The Beatles. I doubt even he thinks that.
https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/all-213-beatles-songs-ranked-from-worst-to-best.html
It seems the other Bill Wyman did attempt to get this one to stop using the name he’d been born with, to no avail.
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Can-Bill-Wyman-be-Bill-Wyman-No-says-Bill-Wyman-2715728.php
It’s not great.
Maybe not. But it’s not worse than Mr Moonlight is it?
Er no, for some reason I initially thought covers were not included.
Of Penny Lane he says “Paul McCartney grokked Lennon’s Strawberry Fields as a Liverpool reference”. I’d never heard the word grokked before. According to the internet it means “understand (something) intuitively or by empathy”. Well.
Created by Robert Heinlein in “Stranger in a strange land”
Adapted/adopted by hippy-dippy types in the late ’60s & early ’70s to mean “reach understanding of something profound while very stoned”.
This guy sounds like a casualty of that era. That punk-era saying “never trust a hippie” may not be a universal truth, but I for one would not trust the judgement of someone who still uses that word.
I saw ‘She’s Leaving Home’ at no.204 and immediately took umbrage.
This would be a project for The Afterword that would last for ever.
dunno about the Afterword, but I’m going to have a crack at it, to go along with my other lists. I like the Beatles and I like lists. Don’t know why I haven’t done this one before. For all the music I’ve got, and all the artists I really like, there’s only the Beatles, and maybe Lennon solo, where I know all the songs well enough to be able to do this without a little listen to one or two first. I don’t want to look at Mr Wyman’s list first though, so I wonder what he included. I’ll go for all album, single and EP tracks, all unreleased songs that were fully formed, selected good audio quality songs from their radio shows that didn’t appear on record until the BBC albums, but only the main version of each song, so no ranking alternate takes or demos, even if a few like Strawberry Fields Forever and While My Guitar Gently weeps have excellent alternate takes that are almost as good as the released versions. Actually, I prefer the oboe version of Penny Lane to the single. It’s not going to be as easy as I first thought though, as it’s difficult to critique something that’s so ingra
oops, clumsy fingers. I was going to say it’s difficult to critique something that’s so ingrained in your head that you never need to, or have no desire to, ever hear it again. Hey Jude is good, but I don’t really want to ever hear it again, cos all I can hear is thousands of people at the Olympics closing ceremony/Queen’s birthday/whatever na-na-na-na’ing along to it.
I feel like I’ve opened a can of worms.
If I were to try this, my problem would be ranking the songs. The difference between, say, Mr. Moonlight and Ticket To Ride is pretty obvious but We Can Work It Out and Paperback Writer?
Yes, agreed. By and large this is impossible and much of it comes down to personal taste. She Loves You in the Top Ten? Daft, as far as I am concerned. But it’s an iconic and terrific record, so if that’s how he feels, who am I to argue?
Well that’s always the problem with big lists, as I am finding out on that ranking my albums project I’m doing. I’m usually pretty happy about the top30-40 and the bottom 20 or so, but those in the middle are pretty interchangeable and can be swayed by just one great song.
But I do know that Paperback Writer will be a bit higher than We Can Work It Out, and that She Loves You will be higher still, as it has the excitement factor that good pop music needs. Just not as much as the single that came after it.
I’ve sorted out the list and have around 275 songs, but that’s including all the BBC Radio songs, a few outtakes, a couple from Hamburg and the Decca Audition. I know some of the radio songs are ropey quality though. They should give them to Giles Martin, because my Esther Tapes bootlegs sounds horrid compared to the version he’s just cleaned up. I reckon I might leave the radio ones out…but that means no Soldier of Love, which is one of their greatest covers. I’ll sleep on it…
You’d have thought Bill Wyman would be glad to happen upon Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
It’s actually a pretty decent list. No one in the world would have exactly the same one, but that’s how it works.
I can remember coming across this particular Bill Wyman when he wrote for the web-based magazine Addicted To Noise over two decades ago. The magazine is long gone, so don’t bother looking for it.
As for this lists, and indeed lists in general, a great big Meh! from me. I’ve not even bothered looking at this one.
I’ll doff my cap for him putting Lovely Rita in the top 20. Such an overlooked song with more hooks than Velcro.
‘More hooks than velcro’! Tell me you didn’t come up with that! If you did, you’re a genius. Either way, I’m nicking it.
Heh, I don’t know if I did, but I also don’t know where I got it from if I didn’t. A quick search online shows me that as a phrase other people have used it. Boooo!
I think it was Donovan who used it first.
Sure to have been, since he invented both hooks and Velcro.
Love me do at 141 and Two of us at 111.
The guy is off his rocker.
I presume you mean Love Me Do is too high? Two of Us right in the middle is about right.
@dai not at all.
Both would be in my top 20.
Then you are the one off your rocker 😉 @SteveT
Love Me Do is probably their weakest single and extremely average by Beatles standards. The follow up was the first real sign of their greatness.
Dear Prudence is a bit high for my liking. It’s little more than a nice riff (that Lennon stole from Donovan, I hear?).
But as soon as I heard of this list, I thought there’s only one song that could top a list like this… and I was right.
I like a little list now and then, but ranking the entire Beatles catalogue? I like just about all of their music to varying degrees but Nah…
Better things to do than rank them myself and not enough interest in seeing what anyone else makes of it either.
Ever noticed how Civil Servants and Retired Teachers predominate on Mastermind and the other “difficult” TV and radio quizzes. And it’s nearly always a Civil Servant or a retired one that wins. Or a black cab driver.
Probably not frontline staff at a benefits office or Jobcentre.
Hey! That’s racist! Caucasian cab drivers could just as easily win Mastermind.
‘Probably not frontline staff at a benefits office or Jobcentre.’
That’s because they only ever deal in trick questions, designed to catch the contender (can we call people who are in need of help contenders?) out. They’d therefore overthink Magnus’s questions, trying not to drop themselves in it, and get themselves in a tiz.
By the time frontline Jobcentre or DSS staff retire, their brains are either burnt out husks or blocks of granite. Either way, not Mastermind material.
What’s the New Mary Jane is not there. Resoundingly the worst song of theirs I’d say.
Good Day Sunshine doesn’t deserve to be last. It’s not even the worst song by The Beatles.*
*jokes like this are funny because they don’t make sense, all right?
As much as I’d like to rank The Beatles’ output, the list order would depend entirely on my mood that day. Sometimes I think Penny Lane is the best thing they ever did. Other times I’m partial to a bit of Something. In my opinion there are about ten – fifteen songs that could easily be my favourite on any given day, and a further ten-fifteen that I’d consider their worst.
Today’s best-ever Beatles song is “I Will” , but I’ve Got A Feeling It Won’t Be Long until This Boy changes his mind again. Could be Any Time At All, Because I’ve Got A Feeling that in The End Tomorrow Never Knows.
Does anyone remember hearing Tomorrow Never Knows at the time of release? It’s still astonishing now in its own write (SWIDT) but in the context of 1966 and not that long since moptop fab fourness it must have been a real eye-opener.