Category: Uncategorized
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The last two times I attended a Paul McCartney concert–in 2016 and 2025–the song that the audience seemed to enjoy the most was Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. At both shows, Paul introduced the song by telling us that we were expected to participate. In 2016, he said, “I know you’ve been singing along. But at this point,…
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I’m no psychologist or sociologist, but it seems clear in any group larger than two, the members form separate alliances with and bear resentments towards each other that can work to the detriment of the larger collective. The Beatles were as susceptible to these types of pressure as any of us. So what were the…
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As a reminder, I’m choosing tracks from The Beatles’ U.K. albums that weren’t released as singles in their home country, but could have been. Help! (1965) The tile track and Ticket to Ride were both issued as singles. The strong temptation here is to choose Paul’s Yesterday, which has been covered by thousands of artists.…
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I recently picked up a copy of Chuck Klosterman’s book Football. The book is about “the cultural value of football”–U.S. football, that is–though Klosterman digresses into several other topics. One of those digressions concerns pop music. The GOATs Klosterman begins Chapter 4, “The Semantics of GOAT Herding,” this way: “If you believe, as I do,…
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The Beatles have three songs that contain an exclamation point in the title. Can you name them? The answers appear at the end of this post. But the exclamation point isn’t the punctuation mark that concerns us today. Instead, we’re looking at the six (or seven) titles that contain parentheses (singular: parenthesis). Specifically, I’m curious…
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How many Beatles were there? I don’t mean to trick you; if you answered “Duh, four,” you’ve passed the test. But is that the most accurate answer? Yes. Yes it is. So if you’d like to share your thoughts about the four Beatles, email me– Kidding! There were definitely more than four Beatles. But how…
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When I worked in corporate America, among our favorite time-wasters was to try to solve problems by asking 5 “what” or “why” questions. I thought I’d use that method as a way to explore what I consider to be the big Beatles question: What made The Beatles great? Question 1: Why should we consider The…
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Here’s the second in the series naming an MVB (Most Valuable Beatle) for each album. First up was Please Please Me. This time, we’ll tackle: With The Beatles (1963) Songwriting: Among the album’s 14 tracks are 8 originals (including the first song written by George, Don’t Bother Me) and 6 covers. John primarily wrote 4…
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We’re all familiar with Brian Epstein’s boast, reported in Michael Braun’s excellent Love Me Do! The Beatles’ Progress (Graymalkin Media, 1964), that when he first heard The Beatles, “‘I knew they would be bigger than Elvis.’” Mark Lewisohn, in the Extended Special Edition of Tune In (Little, Brown, 2013), writes, “It’s an interesting thought that…
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The Beatles recorded many great album tracks that could have been–actually, absolutely would have been–singles for other bands. I’ll kick off this sub-series by examining their four 1963-64 albums to find a song that they could have released as a single. For this exercise, I’m only choosing singles from (and excluding singles that have already…
Off The Beatle Track 