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Excuse my English im from Venezuela

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Not a problem...your English is much better than my Spanish.

Venezuela - #1 for Rum and Beauty Queens.

(mmm...note to self, call travel agent)

Megatron commands you to cease bickering immediately. The greatest Beatles song is undoutedly "Hey Bulldog" from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.

Now don't you all look foolish?

The Beatles really were the first alternative band. First indie band, too, depending on your definition of that.

My favorite song would have to be "Happiness is a Warm Gun." That song is friggin' brilliant.

OK, if you want to post about the Beatles, this is the place, and we can let the Wilco thread be about Wilco. Later, Gators.

Hey, Thanks for bumping an old Beatles thread!
Unlike a lot of fans, I really love their early intimate, early simplistic love songs as much as their more profound abstract stuff.
Favourite albums would include "A Hard days Night" amd "Abbey Road" - off course!
Really love the motown cover "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "While My Guitar Gently Weaps" is always a fave too.

O here we go.

Isn't it pretty much accepted that the best Beatles records are, as someone called "the big 5": Abbey Road, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt Pepper, and the White Album? The others are excellent, but could you really place them above any of these 5? As for ranking these albums, I'd say Abbey Road and Rubber Soul are my favorites. I am still impressed at how effortlessly Lennon and McCartney constructed the second half of Abbey Road, they make it seem so natural, but had any artist done anything like that up until then? I doubt it. As for Rubber Soul, I have said this before, but if I had to have one album that permanently emanated from me while I walked around, it would be Rubber Soul. Something about that album just seems so serene/innocent/care-free. I love it.

Probably the self-titled/'White Album'. Not everyone would like the album's scatter-shot theme, but The Beatles have the talent to make it a lot of fun, rather than disjointed and aimless.

Also, while I haven't listened to Magical Mystery Tour in any meaningful way, "Fool on the Hill" is a fantastic song.

I think Revolver and Abbey Road are the best Beatles albums...

For the rest of the 'big 5'...Rubber Soul has some of their best songs like Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, and Drive My Car, but some of the McCartney songs on it just bore me to death (Michelle, for instance). Sgt Pepper when I first heard it I called my favorite album, but now that I got over the cool style of the album I don't think it has as much substance. White Album also has some of their best songs but there are also some of their worst songs on it. O-Bla-Di, Rocky Racoon, and then the strange fillers like 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?' Trim it down and it might be their best album, but I can't listen to it all the way through without affixing my finger to the skip button.

As for their pre-Rubber Soul stuff....it just seems more pop to me, before their sound became mature, and they were really flaunting their image with things like the Hard Day's Night movie where they come off like the Animaniacs.

A Hard Day's Night, film and album, are both great, and it's not just because the Beatles are in the movie. It's similar in style to a Marx Bros. flick, but it's got better music and updated crazy humor. I don't really like most of the film Help!, but the album is tremendous. I guess the Beatles may be one of my sacred cows because I don't believe they have any "worst songs".

Not even O-Bla-Di?

What the hell is wrong with O-Bla-Di???

I guess tastes are just different. I remember pE, I think, hates "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" too. I like it, my wife likes it, my daughter likes it, it's on The Beatles 1967-1970 (ostensibly a greatest hits album), etc. I've LOVED "Rocky Raccoon" from the first minute I heard it, and "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" has more blues balls than....I'll leave that one alone. Besides, after Paul sings the title at the end of that last song, the next song that comes on is "I Will". I seem to feel some anti-McCartney bias coming from you, Bob. I may be in the minority still, but there's no filler for me anywhere on The Beatles. No, not even "Revolution 9".

Well, I might bring up that 'O-Bla-Di' was voted by some publication to be the worst song ever written...

Musically I find it shallow and substanceless, and dreadfully repeatetive.

And yes, I do have some anti-McCartney bias. I think he's less creative than Lennon or Harrison. He seemed to focus on overly hooky pop songs and ambitious to the point of grandiose projects that none of the others wanted to go along with. I think Paul was in it to become an icon, whereas John and George were in it to play good music. I find a lot of his songs overly focused on being cute or chipper and not focused enough on expanding the sound or instilling any kind of emotion into the music.

O-Bla-Di is just the prime example of these tendencies. Overly cute and hooky, bereft of sincere emotional content.

White Album, Rubber Soul & Magical Mystery Tour.

Fave tunes - Long Long Long, I saw her standing there, Ticket to Ride, Cry for a shadow, While my guitar gently weeps, I'm looking through you.

Oh, and I like Ob-la-di Ob-la-da too.

My absolute favorite is "In My Life" but I pretty much love everyone song mentioned here. It was so fun to read this thread and to have all of these songs playing in my head! Do you think there's any other band which has done this many songs that so many people love?

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Originally posted by Elle:
Do you think there's any other band which has done this many songs that so many people love?

I certainly don't think so, and there never will be,

No there never will be another band like the Beatles, not even Coldplay as some people seem to be saying (hah).

As for McCartney vs Lennon...I have always felt McCartney's Beatles songs were more consistent while Lennon's songs were more experimental/hit-or-miss. Of course this was the case because McCartney always liked to play it safe. I don't think that necessarily means that he didn't care about the music though, it just means he liked writing catchy songs, and what's wrong with that? The two of them were probably the most talented rock vocalists the world will ever see, not just because they had great voices but because of the inflection/feeling their drew out of their songs.

And I did see Ob-la-di was voted worst song by some British magazine...I really don't know what to say, you can't think of a worse song than Ob-la-di Ob-la-da? Morons.

This is pretty funny, if you like the Beatles and know some philosophy: a collection of philosophical insights found in Beatles lyrics, mostly pointed out by philosophers.

http://weka.ucdavis.edu/%7Eahwiki/bin/view/Main/BeatlesPhilosophy

Hmm..I could name a few bands I think are better than the Beatles, but it is awfully hard to be awfully good *and* ridiculously popular at the same time, and for a prolonged period of time.

It is impossible to recapture the cultural impact the Beatles had. At the very least it's not going to happen as long as people still listen to stuff so heavily influenced by the Beatles.

(Of course, you could argue Elvis Presley....nah.)

Bob, just wondering who you think is better than the Beatles, (in terms of rock bands). Don't take this wrong, I'm not trying to start an argument, (I'm only a "slacker") but seriously, what band can compare with:

Please Please Me, With the Beatles, Hard Day's Night, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, Abbey Road, etc.

I'd argue that Dylan comes close, but you specifically said "bands". I mean, my "favorite" band is the Pixies, but I'd never argue that they were better than the Beatles. Just curious...