Tag: Abbey Road

Let It Abbey Road

I’m two-thirds of the way through The Beatles: Get Back, the 8-hour documentary on Disney+. It inspired me to add another installment of my Better The Beatles series, wherein I trim the fat from their discography to create super albums of only their best stuff. (Previously: Sgt. Pepper’s Magical Mystery Tour, The (Single) White Album, and Ram McCartney.)

Since both Abbey Road and Let It Be contain songs created during the same period, here’s my track listing for a hypothetical Let It AbBey Road:

  1. Get Back
  2. Come Together
  3. Two Of Us
  4. Something
  5. Dig A Pony
  6. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
  7. Oh! Darling
  8. I’ve Got A Feeling
  9. Octopus’s Garden
  10. Let It Be
  11. Here Comes The Sun
  12. Because
  13. For You Blue
  14. You Never Give Me Your Money
  15. Polythene Pam
  16. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
  17. Golden Slumbers
  18. Carry That Weight
  19. The End

The omissions from Abbey Road weren’t terribly tough: “Sun King”, “Mean Mr. Mustard”, and “Her Majesty” are slights, and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is too long. 

Similarly, it was pretty easy to remove “One After 909”, “I Me Mine”, “Dig It”, and “Maggie Mae” from Let It Be because they aren’t good. “Across The Universe” and “The Long And Winding Road” are good, I guess, but also tonal outliers from the rest.

You’re welcome.

December 15, 2021 Add Comment

you never give me your money

I love antique shops. There are 3 here in Naperville but only one of them is that good. I just love walking through aisles and aisles of history and nostalgia. Recently I’ve been finding piles upon piles of old records. Because of my love of history and good music, I naturally appreciate a good record. I only own two so far; The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Billy Joel’s The Stranger, but I plan on getting a lot more in the future.

I realized that back when records were the only form of music, you couldn’t just throw your entire music library on shuffle like you can nowadays with iPods and CD changers. They required listening to the whole record straight through, so music back then was made to make this possible. Consequentially, albums made sense. They weren’t just random songs put together to make some money–they were fluid and coherent. So recently I’ve been making myself pick an album to listen to and listen to it straight through. It makes the experience so much more fruitful and enjoyable. You can get the overall feeling of the record and then decide if you like it or not. Just try it a few times. I will suggest starting with Abbey Road because it is the greatest album ever made.

P.S. Don’t forget to send me your guesses for the Academy Award nominations which are immediately under this post.

January 26, 2007 Add Comment