My list of all of the Beatles songs ranked from best to worst

      I saw a YouTube video the other day where someone had ranked the Beatles songs into a top 100 list.  Some of the choices were pretty solid, but others seemed waaaay off base.  (For example, the person had "I Will" -- a minor McCartney ballad from the white album -- at #17, ahead of "A Day in the Life" which was at #19.)  So, I figured that I ought to try to make my own top 100 Beatles songs list.

     To begin the process, I thought that it would be best to go album by album and put each song in the order of how much I like it.  After all of the albums (and non-album songs, on singles and EPs) have had their contents ranked, then it would be easier to mix and match them from best to worst.  I did discover, however, that during the mixing and matching process, I sometimes elevated or lower a song's ranking different to how I had done when ranking the album they were on.  For example, when ranking the songs on the Please Please Me (1963) album, I had "Twist and Shout" ranked as the 4th best song on that album, but when compiling the overall list below, it became the 2nd highest place song from that album.  Go figure.

     I didn't go back and listen to any of the songs while compiling the list, relying on my memory of them.  This did cause a re-evaluation, though, when -- after completing the list -- I decided to listen to the two longest-ranked Lennon-McCartney songs: "When I Get Home" and "Little Child."  Originally I had "Little Child" as the lowest ranked of the two, but when I listened to the current remastered versions of them on YouTube, I decided that "When I Get Home" was worse, and so switched positions for them.  The harmonica solo used to be horribly edited in on my old vinyl version (at least in my memory), which had contributed to my negative opinion of that track, but it sounds OK on the remaster.  

     Obviously this is a personal ranking and other people will place some of the songs higher or lower.  Heck, even I would likely rearrange the list in the future (and may end up doing so, at some point).  One of the things that I did find difficult to rank was the shorter songs like "Dig It," "Her Majesty" and "Maggie Mae."  If I was making a mix tape for somebody, I would definitely include those songs (if there was room on the tape) since they are fun and catchy.  But how can those "throwaway" songs compare to a song that the Beatles took more seriously and spent more time working on, which I might not love as much?  For example, you can see that I've rated "Her Majesty" and "Maggie Mae" just higher than "Within You Without You" -- which I can see as being a ridiculous notion.  But the fact is that I find those two short dittys more enjoyable to listen to.  "Dig It" ranked even higher due to having clever lyrics, and the short version on the Let It Be album doesn't overstay its welcome.  (If we were to count the long, meandering version that they performed during the Get Back sessions, the song would place much, much lower!) 

     So, with that introduction out of the way, here's my (preliminary) list of my favorite Beatles songs, in order from best to worst. Only the U.K. album releases from 1963 to 1966 are listed.  All songs written by Lennon-McCartney unless otherwise indicated.

1. "Strawberry Fields Forever"

2. "I Am the Walrus"

3. "Penny Lane"

4. "Eleanor Rigby"

5. "A Day in the Life"

6. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

7. "Helter Skelter"

8. "Yesterday"

9. "Hey Jude"

10. "We Can Work It Out"

11. "Let It Be" (single version)

12. "Let It Be" (album version)

13. "Here Comes the Sun" (George Harrison)

14. "Dear Prudence"

15. "Revolution"

16. "Come Together"

17. "All You Need Is Love"

18. "Rain"

19. "She Loves You"

20. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

21. "I Want to Hold Your Hand"

22. "Paperback Writer"

23. "Two of Us"

24. "From Me to You"

25. "You Never Give Me Your Money"

26. "Help!"

27. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"

28. "Got to Get You into My Life"

29. "Yellow Submarine"

30. "I Should Have Known Better"

31. "If I Fell"

32. "Taxman" (George Harrison)

33. "Any Time at All"

34. "I'll Follow the Sun"

35. "Nowhere Man"

36. "Drive My Car"

37. "I Saw Her Standing There"

38. "Eight Days a Week"

39. "For No One"

40. "I'm a Loser"

41. "I've Just Seen a Face"

42. "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"

43. "Here, There and Everywhere"

44. "Tomorrow Never Knows"

45. "When I'm Sixty-Four"

46. "Magical Mystery Tour"

47. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)"

48. "A Hard Day's Night"

49. "She Said She Said"

50. "And I Love Her"

51. "Good Day Sunshine"

52. "Can't Buy Me Love"

53. "All My Loving"

54. "Get Back" (album version)

55. "Get Back" (1969 single version)

56. "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey"

57. "Polythene Pam"

58. "Cry Baby Cry"

59. "Martha My Dear"

60. "I'm So Tired"

61. "Back in the U.S.S.R."

62. "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"

63. "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"

64. "Hey Bulldog"

65. "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window"

66. "Golden Slumbers"

67. "Carry That Weight"

68. "The End"

69. "Revolution 9"

70. "Sexy Sadie"

71. "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"

72. "Glass Onion"

73. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (George Harrison)

74. "Day Tripper"

75. "Something" (George Harrison)

76. "Julia"

77. "The Long and Winding Road"

78. "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"

79. "Piggies" (George Harrison)

80. "Rocky Raccoon"

81. "Bad Boy" (Larry Williams)

82. "Twist and Shout" (Phil Medley, Bert Russell)

83. "Please Please Me"

84. "Love Me Do" (album version)

85. "Love Me Do" (original single version with Ringo on drums)

86. "No Reply"

87. "Ticket to Ride"

88. "Birthday"

89. "Love You To" (George Harrison)

90. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (Larry Williams)

91. "Tell Me Why"

92. "I'm Looking Through You"

93. "You're Going to Lose That Girl"

94. "If I Needed Someone" (George Harrison)

95. "Michelle"

96. "In My Life"

97. "Girl"

98. "Blackbird"

99. "Hello, Goodbye"

100. "The Fool on the Hill"

101. "Lady Madonna"

102. "Oh! Darling"

103. "This Boy"

104. "Your Mother Should Know"

105. "Don't Let Me Down"

106. "I Me Mine" (George Harrison)

107. "I Feel Fine"

108. "Because"

109. "With a Little Help from My Friends"

110. "Getting Better"

111. "Across The Universe" (from the 1969 charity album No One's Gonna Change Our World)

112. "Across the Universe" (Let It Be album version)

113. "Good Morning Good Morning"

114. "All Together Now"

115. "The Ballad of John and Yoko"

116. "I Call Your Name"

117. "I'll Be Back"

118. "Things We Said Today"

119. "Wait"

120. "You Won't See Me"

121. "Tell Me What You See"

122. "Think for Yourself" (George Harrison)

123. "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)"

124. "Dig It" (Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Richard Starkey)

125. "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

126. "Lovely Rita"

127. "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party"

128. "I've Got a Feeling"

129. "You Really Got a Hold on Me" (Smokey Robinson)

130. "You Can't Do That"

131. "Money (That's What I Want)" (Janie Bradford, Berry Gordy)

132. "You Like Me Too Much" (George Harrison)

133. "Another Girl"

134. "And Your Bird Can Sing"

135. "Doctor Robert"

136. "I'm Only Sleeping"

137. "It Won't Be Long"

138. "The Word"

139. "Baby's in Black"

140. "Baby, You're a Rich Man"

141. "What You're Doing"

142. "It's All Too Much" (George Harrison)

143. "I'm Down"

144. "The Inner Light" (George Harrison)

145. "Every Little Thing"

146. "Rock and Roll Music" (Chuck Berry)

147. "Do You Want to Know a Secret"

148. "Yes It Is"

149. "Thank You Girl"

150. "Savoy Truffle" (George Harrison)

151. "Old Brown Shoe" (George Harrison)

152. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"

153. "Mother Nature's Son"

154. "I Will"

155. "For You Blue" (George Harrison)

156. "Dig a Pony"

157. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"

158. "Revolution 1"

159. "Octopus's Garden" (Richard Starkey)

160. "Words of Love" (Buddy Holly)

161. "P.S. I Love You"

162. "Slow Down" (Larry Williams)

163. "Blue Jay Way" (George Harrison)

164. "Fixing a Hole"

165. "Mean Mr. Mustard"

166. "Honey Pie"

167. "Yer Blues"

168. "Hold Me Tight"

169. "I Wanna Be Your Man"

170. "It's Only Love"

171. "I Need You" (George Harrison)

172. "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You"

173. "I'll Cry Instead"

174. "She's a Woman"

175. "The Night Before"

176. "Not a Second Time"

177. "All I've Got to Do"

178. "Till There Was You" (Meredith Willson)

179. "Roll Over Beethoven" (Chuck Berry)

180. "Honey Don't" (Carl Perkins)

181. "Misery"

182. "There's a Place"

183. "Please Mr. Postman" (Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland, Robert Bateman)

184. "I Want to Tell You" (George Harrison)

185. "Only a Northern Song" (George Harrison)

186. "I'll Get You"

187. "She's Leaving Home"

188. "Sun King"

189. "Ask Me Why"

190. "Don't Bother Me" (George Harrison)

191. "Long, Long, Long" (George Harrison)

192. "One After 909"

193. "Her Majesty"

194. "Maggie Mae" (traditional; arranged by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starkey)

195. "Within You Without You" (George Harrison)

196. "Flying" (instrumental; Harrison–Lennon–McCartney–Starkey)

197. "Chains" (Gerry Goffin, Carole King)

198. "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (Carl Perkins)

199. "Run for Your Life"

200. "Act Naturally" (Morrison–Russell)

201. "Anna (Go to Him)" (Arthur Alexander)

202. "Don't Pass Me By" (Richard Starkey)

203. "Baby It's You" (Mack David, Barney Williams, Burt Bacharach)

204. "Devil In Her Heart" (Richard Drapkin)

205. "Long Tall Sally" (Enotris Johnson, Robert Blackwell, Richard Penniman)

206. "Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!" (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller/Richard Penniman)

207. "Wild Honey Pie"

208. "What Goes On" (Lennon–McCartney–Richard Starkey)

209. "Good Night"

210. "A Taste of Honey" (Bobby Scott, Ric Marlow)

211. "Mr. Moonlight" (Roy Lee Johnson)

212. "Little Child"

213. "When I Get Home"

214. "Matchbox" (Carl Perkins)

215. "Boys" (Luther Dixon, Wes Farrell)

216. "Sie liebt dich" (Lennon/McCartney/Jean Nicolas/Lee Montogue)

217. "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" (Lennon/McCartney/Jean Nicolas/Heinz Hellmer)

REVIEW: The Beatles in Comic Strips

(Note: I wrote the following review in August 2012 for a comics website, but I withdrew it for consideration after the editor of the site, two months later, requested a rewrite.  I then submitted it to a Beatles website, that replied to me in early November 2012 that they would be willing to run the piece -- but I never heard anything back about it.  So-o-o, since it's been almost a year now since I wrote the thing, I figure I might as well run it here on my own blog.  Better late than never!  My thanks to JASON SACKS for having provided me with a review copy of this book last summer.)

 

The Beatles In Comic Strips

Authors: Enzo Gentile and Fabio Schiavo

Publisher: Skira Editore (www.skira.net)

(Distributed in the USA by Rizzoli
International Publications, Inc.)

$39.95

A review by Rob Imes

3 out of 5 stars.

The Beatles In Comic Strips by Enzo Gentile and Fabio Schiavo is a thick, 240-page hardcover book in full color that provides examples from around the world of the Beatles' influence on comics. The book was published in Italy, and there are pages here that most English-speaking fans have likely never seen before. It's an interesting hodge-podge of images from the collection of co-author Fabio Schiavo, covering the group's career from their explosive fame on the world stage in 1964 to the present day where they remain seemingly bigger than ever. There's also a large double-sided fold-out illustration poster in the book.

As noted in Gentile's introduction, the Beatles are well suited for the cartoon life. In the beginning, there was only their name (which drew the inevitable comparison to bugs) and their look (the moptop haircut). Ringo could be easily distinguished from the rest in a cartoon drawing by giving him a bigger nose, and (later) Lennon would always be wearing his familiar round granny glasses. Comics deal in shorthand identification (it's both a strength and limitation) since lingering over a panel too long slows down the flow of the narrative, and so the visual cues provided by the Fab Four works well for the speedy medium. Song titles (and lyrics like "Yeah, yeah, yeah"), iconic album covers, and the drama of their career itself have supplied an endless supply of references for cartoonists to mine over the years.

When I heard of the premise of this book, I was reminded of another Beatles book that I've had for many years, The Art of The Beatles by Mike Evans from 1984, which examined the group's influence on art as well as the group's own imagery. One short section looked at The Beatles in comics, and contrasted the 1978 Marvel Super Special titled The Beatles Story and the 1981 Look-In comics serial The Story of The Beatles. Evans wrote that "the Marvel treatment was unfortunately (and unintentionally) hilarious" due to its inaccuracies and poor likenesses, and consequently the three images from that comic shown in Evans' book were reproduced at tiny size. The Look-In serial, however, Evans praised as "the only worthwhile comic strip record of the Beatles," and a page from that was reproduced at full size. Although the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" may have some truth to it, Evans' text accompaniment on every other page of the book explained to the reader just what he was looking at, and helped put the images in proper critical context. I learned a lot looking at that book, with Evans as the helpful guide.

In contrast, while The Beatles In Comic Strips is a feast for the eyes, the reader is thrown into a sea of images from around the world with less hand-holding (no pun intended) taking place. Like the Evans book, the Gentile-Schiavo book is set up chronologically, so that the older pieces are at the front of the book, the more recent ones at the end. There is also a timeline of the Beatles' career from 1960 to 2010, just in case the reader isn't sure what happened each year in Beatle history. (This suggests to me that the book may be aiming beyond the Beatle fan market and more at general readers who are less familiar with this basic chronology of events.)

The text pages are separated from the image sections of the book, so that you get a page or two of description and then a smattering of visuals for the next half-dozen or so pages, and then the next page or two of text. This does cause the reader to have to double back to the text when they finally come upon the image that had been described. For example, a paragraph of text on page 30 titled "Across the Universe" (which is accompanied by a large photo of Jane Fonda as Barbarella) concerns the Italian science-fiction comics heroine Alika, and how the Beatles were portrayed in one issue. When a page from the comic is shown in the book, however, it is not until page 54. So, there is a lot of turning of pages back and forth for the reader to recall what was said about the comic being shown.

There is a wealth of Beatles-related images here published in comic books from 1964 to 2010. But each comic is represented by only one page (I counted two pages in a couple rare instances) regardless of whether the comics represented are more Beatlecentric than others. Each image is accompanied by a line of text giving the title and year of publication, country of origin, and occasionally the name of the page's creator(s). Sometimes the cover of the publication is shown at smaller size at the bottom of the page, too (usually obscuring some of the artwork in the process).

Since the material comes from all over the globe, the comics pages are written in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and so forth -- none of which is translated. So unless you are multilingual, there are a few pages in here that -- unless a Beatle is clearly shown -- you may wonder why it was selected for inclusion. Unfortunately, some pages were evidently thought worthy of inclusion if they simply mentioned the title of a Beatles song. For example, a Doom Patrol page from 2000 is included because Robotman calls a villain "the Sgt. Pepper of the senior set!" An Evil Ernie page from 1998 is here because a character says, "The first stop on our Magical Mystery Tour. Follow me. I have a limo waiting." Luckily I can read English and figure out why the page was included (slight though I may think that reasoning); I have less luck on some of the pages written in other languages. 

Another drawback for this reader is that the images accompanying the text pieces (as mentioned earlier, with the Barbarella example) are unrelated to the Beatles. To simulate the passing of the decades, text pages are accompanied by big photos (sometimes two-page spreads) of icons of the era that have nothing to do with the Fab Four, such as Charlie's Angels (the late 1970s), Michael Keaton as Batman (actually out of sequence, placed in the early 1970s section to represent the text talking about the 1970 Batman comic inspired by the "Paul is Dead" controversy), and so on. In all, there are 24 pages devoted to such non-Beatles-related photos. Again, their inclusion suggests a view toward appealing outside the Beatles fan market to a wider general readership.

(Page 72 shows the cover of Batman #222 (June 1970), but the comic is not discussed 

until pages 84-85, where it is accompanied by a photo from Batman Returns.  Huh?)

The good thing about this book is that even the most dedicated Beatles fan or comics fan has probably not seen most of these images before -- and even if they had, it's nice to have it all in one sturdy hardcover book. As I read the book, however, I couldn't help but wish its compilers had been more discriminating in their selections. In fact, it got me thinking that a proper anthology of the best Beatles comics appearances would be even better than this book.

What got me thinking about this is when I saw how Alex Toth's 2-pager "Big Daddy's Word to the Wise" (from Big Daddy Roth #2, Dec. 1964) is represented in the book. First, Toth is not credited. Second, only the first of the two pages is shown; the second page, which predicts how the moptops will look in 1994, is omitted. Third, the dialogue balloon which mentions that the second page of the strip will show how the Fabs will look in 1994 is obscured by an unnecessary image of the magazine's cover (not Beatles related). The two-pager can be read in its entirety in Toth: "One for the Road" (Auad Publishing, 2000) and would be a worthy addition to an anthology collection of Beatles comic strips.

(On the left, the Alex Toth page in The Beatles In Comic Strips.  

On the right, the same page as reprinted in Toth: "One for the Road" in 2000.)

The front cover of New Voice Comics' 1991 one-shot Johnny is shown in the The Beatles In Comic Strips, but nothing from its interior, which consists of reminisces about Lennon's work from small-press cartoonists. Tim Corrigan's strip that closes Johnny in particular would be worth adding in full to a Beatles anthology (no pun intended) of comics. As would Craig Bartlett's one-page strip "Nothing is Real" (Centifugal Bumble-Puppy #1; Fantagraphics, 1987). The fact that Craig's strip isn't included in The Beatles In Comic Strips leads me to think that one-pagers like his were ineligible because that would have involved reprinting them in full. By reprinting only one page of a larger work, the Gentile-Schiavo book could avoid paying a reprint fee by having the republication qualify as fair use for a scholarly work.

There is another aspect of this book which the reader might wish to know about in advance: some of the selections might be in bad taste. At first I figured this was due to the different cultural norms of different countries, but there is some disturbing stuff in the homegrown comics as well. Page 148 has a lovely ink-brush illustration of the Beatles, but the (non-Beatles) front cover of the magazine in which it originally appeared is also shown, a color painting depicting a close-up of a woman's rear-end on a bed being tied up with rope by a man's hands. Why it was felt necessary to include this cover image is beyond me. 

 

 (Page 148 has the lads competing for the reader's attention with a bondage scene.)

Most of the other disturbing images involve the death of John Lennon. The cover of a 1980 Italian publication is shown on page 106, showing a scribbly drawing of Lennon (similar in style to his own artwork) crying "Help!" as what appears to be the muzzle of a gun blasts at him. Page 122 shows a 1983 Metal Hurlant cover of the Fab Four reunited, with Lennon depicted as a rotting corpse with skeletal arms draped around his bandmates. On page 180, Gentile/Schiavo writes about a 1994 cover (shown on page 164 -- see, I told you that you have to flip pages back and forth!) depicting "a John Lennon revenant who looms over his surviving colleagues with crooked glasses and a look straight out of Pet Sematary." Marvel had a storyline where four Skrulls adopted the guise of the Beatles, and on page 219 we are shown the splash page of a 2008 Captain Britain comic where "Lennon" is seen shackled and bloodied, at which his captor then says, "This Skrull has been tortured enough. Please kill it for now." To anyone who loved John Lennon, as I think most serious Beatles fans do, this is obviously a painful and unwelcome image.

There is seemingly a lack of affection in such irreverent depictions, which suggests to me that they may not even be the handiwork of actual Beatles fans, but of comics creators who decided to use (or exploit) the imagery of the Beatles for their own purposes. Again, I would contrast this with Mike Evans' Art of the Beatles book, where more discrimination and taste is on display throughout, and a feeling of real affection for the group. For example, in that book, we see the two versions of artist David Oxtoby's painting of Lennon, "English Rock." The first was painted in 1976 and depicts Lennon's profile against New York in flames. After Lennon's murder, the artist painted over this fiery vision, and replaced the background with a calm blue sky: Lennon at peace. The humanity of the artist is more evident there than in the "clever" appropriation of the group's image for cheap laughs or shock value. Perhaps this says something about the nature of comic books, however, even those in the high-minded independent and foreign comics scene.

My preference would have been for Gentile and Schiavo to have chosen the best material available, explained why it was worthwhile (as Evans did for the art in his book) and left the rest out. Having said that, some of the best comics about the Beatles are in this book; I just wish there was more of that shown, and that there was less of the rest.