The Top Ten Beatles Songs

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Rolling Stone, a legacy publication that won’t exist in a few years after the baby boomers die off and people can finally admit how terrible the last two decades of music was from all the aging rockers they so adore (RS founder Jann Wenner famously reviewed Mick Jagger’s god-awful solo album himself because he couldn’t find anyone on his staff willing to give it five stars, and even more famously fired a critic for daring to give a bad review to Hootie and the Blowfish’s lame sophomore album), is still trying to work a bit more blood out of The Beatles stone. Their latest attempt: a top-ten ranking of the best Beatles songs. The list:

01 “A Day in the Life”
02 “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
03 “Strawberry Fields Forever”
04 “Yesterday”
05 “In My Life”
06 “Something”
07 “Hey Jude”
08 “Let It Be”
09 “Come Together”
10 “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

Aleks Karnick makes an interesting case for “Hey Jude” as the best song, and I’m nearly convinced. But I think what’s great about The Beatles is that you can easily make two believable top ten lists of their songs with zero overlap — an astounding fact for a band that existed for less than a decade. They’re the lazy list-maker’s best friend — with such an ardent young and old fandom, you can create just about any list for folks to talk about and hate on and debate as a way of whoring for traffic and attention. Bonus: you’re guaranteed to leave out someone’s favorites, insulting their whole approach to music and demanding a lengthy rebuttal.

Thus, here’s my own alternative top ten:

01 “Blackbird”
02 “Eleanor Rigby”
03 “I Saw Her Standing There”
04 “Here Comes the Sun”
05 “Taxman”
06 “Julia”
07 “Rain”
08 “Day Tripper”
09 “Revolution”
10 “Get Back”

Hey, look what I did there.

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Tagged as: Blackbird, Hey Jude, Jann Wenner, Pointless Debates, Rolling Stone, Stupid Lists, The Beatles, Top Ten