Take a Sad Song and Extract Every Last Ounce of Spontaneity from It: the Beatles Uber-Ballad Poll

That's interesting and fair enough, Turrican. I wonder what UK hits did Lennon have in his time then?

eleanor rigby is the worst beatles song in this category

and maybe, like, 5 of those above songs are likely to be well-known by the average person, right? I only know about half of them and things like Back Seat of My Car is hardly an iconic hit.

― boat of boats (dog latin), Wednesday, June 17, 2015 3:22 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, I didn't include all the singles! But of the ones I listed there, yeah, I'd say that half of them would be comfortably well-known to the average person, maybe more... and no, 'Back Seat Of My Car' wasn't a big hit, but it's a fucking great single and I'm sure it'll become iconic after McCartney passes away and everyone says how they thought his solo stuff was great all this time.

"Press" should be higher

"Peace a Chance" was written to be a Beatles song, it's was even credited Lennon-McCartney when released.

UK/US perspectives... keep those in mind. US is kind of lunatic abt the Beatles in a way the UK has never been.

Was it? I thought Lennon gave Macca credit as a return for services rendered on "The Ballad of John and Yoko."

Was it? I thought Lennon gave Macca credit as a return for services rendered on "The Ballad of John and Yoko."

yup.

That's interesting and fair enough, Turrican. I wonder what UK hits did Lennon have in his time then?

― boat of boats (dog latin), Wednesday, June 17, 2015 3:40 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

UK hits:

Give Peace A Chance (UK #2)
Instant Karma (UK #5)
Power To The People (UK #7)
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (UK #2)
Imagine - 1975 release (UK #6)
(Just Like) Starting Over (UK - Peaked at #8, fell to #21, then #1 after Lennon's death)

UK flops:

Cold Turkey (UK #14)
Mind Games (UK #26)
Whatever Gets You Thru The Night (UK #36 - but was a US #1!)
#9 Dream (UK #23)
Stand By Me (UK #30)

#14 is hardly a flop

as for TLAWR, it was written as a Ray Charles sog and it kinda works...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhVy3Tx07vA

"Press" should be higher

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 17, 2015 3:44 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It wasn't a ranked list, but if it was then yeah, it'd be up there. I know you've always had a soft spot for that track!

#14 is hardly a flop

― The Manner of Crawly (Tom D.), Wednesday, June 17, 2015 3:53 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It is when you're a Beatle. In 1969. After releasing a solo single that made it to #2. Yeah, I'd say it was a flop.

a very hard spot!

xpost

I think it did pretty well to reach #14 tbh (xp)

yeah #14 for the king beatle in 69 is clearly a flop !

ha – didn't Lennon return his medal on the grounds that "Cold Turkey" was a chart flop?

Hehehehe yeah, that was one of the reasons given...

eheh he was such a dick sometimes.

Not at all, that was funny!

yeah, that too. he could be both !

I'm not even going to bother listing the chart positions for all of McCartney's singles, but yeah, loads of top ten hits, plenty of UK #1 hits... 'Mull Of Kintyre' was a million seller. Plenty of US hits too, as Alfred already pointed out.

I think to most Americans Paul is the guy singing that weird synthy song playing in every store at Christmas time.

Or the guy who plays the guitar for Rihanna.

One reason Paul had the most successful solo career was that he more or less was constantly recording and playing music, George just stopping playing live in the mid 70s, John had the Lost Weekend and then quit music altogether for half a decade, Ringo doing more movie stuff, etc. It's not like they were all continuously engaging w the music industry on the same level.

'My Love', 'Band On The Run', 'Listen To What The Man Said', 'Silly Love Songs', 'With A Little Luck', 'Coming Up', 'Ebony and Ivory' and 'Say Say Say' were the US chart toppers. Funny how 'Mull Of Kintyre' became a UK million seller, but didn't make #1 in the US. Having said that, 'Pipes Of Peace' was a UK #1 as well.

Ringo didn't stop making music – it just sucked.

Ringo just wanted to play. I always thought he should've spent his post-Beatles years as the drummer in a band like The Band or Moby Grape.

Yeah, George stopped playing live in the mid '70s, but he didn't really slow down on his album output until 1982's Gone Troppo. He released eight albums from 1970-1982, but then only two albums (1987's Cloud Nine and 2002's posthumous Brainwashed) after that.

Of course, Paul was also writing and recording songs that people liked and clearly wanted to buy.

If only all of Ringo's stuff was as good as 'It Don't Come Easy'.

Paul is a hustler (I don't mean this in a bad way fwiw) w a pathological need for approval in a way the others weren't imo

By the way:

It Don't Come Easy (UK #4)
Back Off Boogaloo (UK #2)
Photograph (UK #8)
You're Sixteen (UK #4)

^^^

Four Top 10 hits. That's the same amount of UK Top 10 hits from 1969-1974 as Lennon achieved in the same time period.

(Given that the UK 'Imagine' single was issued in '75, and '(Just Like) Starting Over' was '80)

Also, looking at Harrison's UK chart positions, it would seem that even though he never stopped making albums, the hits had pretty much dried up from 1974-1987.

My Sweet Lord (UK #1)
Bangla-Desh (UK #10)
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) (UK #8)

then...

Ding Dong (UK #38)
You (UK #38)
Blow Away (UK #51)
All Those Years Ago (UK #13)

then...

Got My Mind Set On You (UK #2)
When We Was Fab (#25)
This Is Love (UK #55)
Any Road (#37)

for a while in America Ringo was the most successful solo Beatle on the Hot 100.

Seriously? I assume that would have been around the time of the Ringo album, right?

every song between "It Don't Come Easy" and "No No Song/Snookeroo" hit the top ten.

it wasn't even close. George was the biggest solo Beatle as far as album sales until 1973.

Man, Ringo's US singles run from 1971-1975 was nuts:

"It Don't Come Easy" (#4)
"Back Off Boogaloo" (#9)
"Photograph" (#1)
"You're Sixteen" (#1)
"Oh My My" (#5)
"Only You (And You Alone)" (#6)
"No No Song" (#3)

every one of those is songs is at least a B+ or B too.

Holy shit, you guys took to Ringo's solo stuff far more than we ever did, it has to be said!

I'm guessing Paul overtook everyone from 1973 onwards.

Ahah the top 3 most listenned songs for macca on Spotify are :
#3 live and let Die
#2 let it be
And by very far.... #1 three four seconds !
That said it's the live version of let it be.

It helps that McCartney still plays 'Live and Let Die' in his live sets.

Hang on, 'Only Mama Knows' wasn't a single? If there's any track on Memory Almost Full that should have been one. There's some great live renditions of that floating about.

I think I've talked about this here before, but I used to share a flat with a guy who was a complete Beatles fanatic and had hundreds of books on them (this explains why, even though I'm not a Beatles fan, I know shitloads about them). This thread reminded me of it, and I found this post:

Ha Tom, I remember about 30 years ago when I was a nipper and would go to the library and read Roy Carr's The Beatles: An Illustrated Record

Ha ha, is that the one where he goes thru the solo records too? And demolishes all of them, but especially George Harrison. I think he quite liked some of Ringo's albums.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 25 August 2005 12:29 (9 years ago)

Oh yeah, there's a lot of Harrison's solo output that I don't really care for. All Things Must Pass, of course, has most of the good stuff, and I quite like Thirty Three & 1/3. Aside from that, his albums seem to be one or two tracks I don't mind surrounded by a lot that I don't care if I never heard again for a variety of reasons. When he gets stuck in his ponderous mode I actually find him unbearable, and that's before we get to his voice, which at its worst I find equally unbearable.

I don't think "My Sweet Lord" is any more "iconic" a Harrison song than "Something" or "Here Comes The Sun", at least in the US.

Ringo was doing a TON of stuff in the 70s, a lot of it movies, a lot of it producing other people and playing with various friends. He started off playing with John and Yoko and Klaus in a proto-krautrock art band. He made a movie with T-Rex and took the photo that is on the cover of glam masterwork "The Slider". He did all those great albums with Harry Nilsson too. His fingerprints are probably on many more classic albums and movies than all the other Beatles combined.

Harrison's solo input I still haven't explored that much. Paul's either tbh, full-album wise. I should sit down with a bunch of them and give them a try, but I think they are the kind of records that grow on you. Beatles records you instantly fell in love with. I did have a tape of George's "Extra Texture" that got a lot of replays in my car. Can't remember a single song on it but I enjoyed it a lot. It took me 20 years to recognize how amazing "Long Long Long" is, feel like George is in general a deep cuts kinda guy.

Harrison's mid seventies stuff is a horror. The guy needed a producer or co-producer. I quite like the Jeff Lynne-produced stuff – whaddya know, he got a Beatles-influenced producer and it worked.

When I read roy Carr's book 25 years ago I thought, "Harrison's stuff can't be as dreadful as Carr describes." Then I found my mom's copies of Extra Texture, Dark Horse, etc. Thirty-Three and a 1/3 is competent studio rock though, and "Blow Away" from 1979 is among his best ballads.