SONG OF THE DAY

“Baby, You’re A Rich Man” — The Bea­t­les (Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour, Par­lophone UK, 1967). Writ­ten by Lennon & McCartney.

INTERESTING DETAILS (from wikipedia)

- It was orig­i­nally intended for the Yel­low Sub­ma­rine sound­track, but the plan changed when it was used as the B-side of the “All You Need Is Love” sin­gle.
– This was the first song by the band recorded and mixed com­pletely out­side Abbey Road Stu­dios.
– The unusual oboe-like sound was cre­ated with a clavi­o­line, an elec­tronic key­board instru­ment and a fore­run­ner to the ana­log syn­the­sizer. It is played by Lennon on the track.
– Two sep­a­rate songs were actu­ally com­bined to make this piece: the verses from “One of the Beau­ti­ful Peo­ple” by John Lennon were com­bined with Paul McCartney’s pre­vi­ously unac­com­pa­nied “Baby, you’re a rich man…” chorus.

MY TAKE

What can I say? This is one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing Bea­t­les’ songs. I love songs with mul­ti­ple lay­ers, melody shifts, key changes, etc. and this song has got ‘em in spades. I also love the dis­so­nant har­monies in the later “beau­ti­ful peo­ple” cho­ruses. I think the Bea­t­les were best in their later years together, and wel­come the diverse sound that Yoko Ono, drug exper­i­men­ta­tion, meet­ings with gurus and the like brought the the Bea­t­les sound. I grew up with a cas­sette tape of Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour, and have a hard time see­ing it as a set of sep­a­rate songs and not one con­tin­u­ous album ele­ment, but if I had to pick a part out that res­onated with me, it would surely be this weird-happy song.

MY BEATLES TOP 10 SONGS LIST

A NOTE TO MY NON-EXISTENT READERS

…Is a Top 10 list I just can’t bring myself to nar­row down. I can barely pick their Top 10 albums with­out want­ing to make it a Top 15 list. I’m try­ing to be all Nick-Hornby-High-Fidelity here in my first post, but this is just not hap­pen­ing. It was my orig­i­nal inten­tion to pick only 10, I swear it was, but in nar­row­ing it down I hap­pened to pick exactly 20 songs, and since that was a nice even round num­ber, and since I couldn’t bear to part with any of the songs, I present to you my Top 20 (fol­lowed by my Other 36—songs that didn’t make the cut but were too good to not mention).

[Insert your com­ments here, some­thing like: “Wow, what a way to start a blog…” to which I respond: “But for god’s sake, they have hun­dreds of songs” to which you say “meh”].

Enjoy the painstak­ingly ordered list, and its care­fully curated video playlist com­pan­ion on youtube. I will stick with youtube for now as a resource for playlists because you don’t have to log in to see youtube stuff, plus you can choose to just have it on in the back­ground and lis­ten to it, or you could choose to sit and watch the archival video footage, early music videos, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour movie clips and old pho­tos of that group of Liv­er­poo­lians I love so much. Options. Delicious.

And by the way, what a per­fect day to start a mostly music blog: today cel­e­brates the release of the entire Bea­t­les col­lec­tion remas­tered, along with releases of Bea­t­les Rock Band and even Bea­t­les remas­tered box sets (avail­able in stereo or mono). I bought the remas­tered stereo box set on Ama­zon today, though it won’t be here for weeks to enjoy because it’s on mad back order.

Alright, alright.

THE LIST (fea­tur­ing insight­ful com­ments by yours truly)

1. The Fool On The Hill (Favorite since child­hood. One of my first cas­sette tapes, and yes it’s in my car right now.)
   
2. You Never Give Me Your Money (I sing this Todd, jok­ingly, lov­ingly)
   
3. Baby, You’re A Rich Man (I love the choral line and dis­so­nant har­monies of the line “how does it feel to be one of the beau­ti­ful peo­ple?”.)
   
4. Martha My Dear (Just when I think this song should be #1 for its incred­i­ble piano melodies, I remem­ber the three songs I like bet­ter. Still, this song is per­fect in every way.)
   
5. Your Mother Should Know (I love the old sound they cap­tured in this song)
   
6. Two Of Us (The rhythm is so catchy and pic­turesque; it makes me think of walk­ing down a sunny street shaded by large oak trees on the edges)
   
7. Golden Slumber/ Carry That Weight (Count­ing as one song because I’ve always heard them played together; Man, this song car­ries raw power in Golden Slum­bers chorus.)
8. & 9. Mean Mr. Mustard/ Poly­thene Pam (Count­ing as two songs, but often played with Sun King and She Came In Through The Bath­room Win­dow as a set, though nei­ther of these songs even hit my top 60)
9. Poly­thene Pam
10. Mother Nature’s Son (Lyri­cal melodies and gen­tle­ness, espe­cially the hum­ming parts.)
    
11. Lovely Rita (First, I love the wah-wah of the brass instru­ment in the back­ground. Sec­ond, I love the con­cept of the lyrics. Third, I love the tempo and lilt of the step I walk with when I hear it!)
    
12. Dig A Pony (This is rock. It truly doesn’t get much bet­ter than this. God, I would kill to see this live.)
    
13. A Day In The Life (I love songs that have sound sec­tions and swift changes, and this song is one of the best at it. I also love the slight echo to the vocals; it’s haunt­ing and sad and com­fort­ing all at once.)
    
14. Black­bird (Best acoustic gui­tar song ever writ­ten, though I am open for debate.)
    
15. Honey Pie (Just silly. And that’s why I love it. As you can tell, I’m not into a lot of their early or clas­sic stuff. I like it when they get trippy and branch into new instru­ments and sounds.)
    
16. I’ll Fol­low The Sun (And I fol­low that state­ment with one of the most basic, clas­sic early Bea­t­les songs around. Nice, Joan. Why do I enjoy all of their melan­choly songs so much?)
    
17. Flying/ Blue Jay Way (count­ing as one song because I’ve always heard them played together; god, isn’t this sound incred­i­ble? It’s so beyond the time period in his­tory when it was writ­ten. It’s transcendent.)
18. Paper­back Writer (My orig­i­nal child­hood favorite, from even before I owned cas­sette tapes. This one brings me back to about age 7 or 8. And I was prac­tic­ing har­monies with the radio.)
    
19. Hap­pi­ness Is A Warm Gun (One of my newest favorites. I think it’s bril­liant and has incred­i­ble depth of sound. I got into it after the movie “Across The Uni­verse” showed me the light to the full White Album)
    
20. I’m Look­ing Through You (You can’t tell me this didn’t set the stage for music that is still hap­pen­ing today. The way they yell in the cho­rus, I feel Kings of Leon and White Stripes in that so much!)

VIDEOS OF THE DAY

Click here for a youtube.com playlist of my top 20 Bea­t­les songs.

THE OTHER LIST

WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE TOP 20 CUT, a.k.a. the Other 36, in mostly alpha­bet­i­cal order: