Harlepolis said:

Timmy84 said:

And just because I prefer Marvin's version of "Yesterday" does NOT mean I'm gonna knock the originals. I have more respect for the Beatles now than I did probably two years ago. I'm not trying to be a snob on John, Paul, George & Ringo.

Timmy, you throwing shade at me now?

No dear, I'm just telling it like it t-i-is like you are.

Harlepolis said:

AlexdeParis said:

Calling the Beatles overrated = understandable Not being a fan = no big deal Not liking some Beatles songs = ridiculous

Guilty for the 1st two accounts

The 3rd, well I'd be a LIAR if I said I didn't love what Aretha, Chaka and Donny Hathaway did with The Beatles songs

Oh and um,,,I STILL prefer EW&F's rendition of "Got to Get You Into My Life"

Well if you feel that way allow me to send you Sarah Vaughan, "Sings The Beatles".

TD3 said:

Harlepolis said:

Guilty for the 1st two accounts

The 3rd, well I'd be a LIAR if I said I didn't love what Aretha, Chaka and Donny Hathaway did with The Beatles songs

Oh and um,,,I STILL prefer EW&F's rendition of "Got to Get You Into My Life"

Well if you feel that way allow me to send you Sarah Vaughan, "Sings The Beatles".

I'm READY

I'm not a Beatles hater, but Sgt Peppers and the the bloated White Album are way too talked up imo, and songs like Hey Jude/Let It Be/Yesterdays have this simple, jolly, singalong-ness that irritates me.

And I Love Her is beautiful.

In case you haven't heard them, the first two Lennon albums are pretty fuckin great, as good as any of the Beatles' albums.

elmer said:

I'm not a Beatles hater, but Sgt Peppers and the the bloated White Album are way too talked up imo, and songs like Hey Jude/Let It Be/Yesterdays have this simple, jolly, singalong-ness that irritates me.

And I Love Her is beautiful.

In case you haven't heard them, the first two Lennon albums are pretty fuckin great, as good as any of the Beatles' albums.

I'll actually commit blasphemy and say I'm not a huge fan of the White Album either. Sgt. Pepper is extraordinary, tough.

Abbey Road will always be my absolute favorite album of theirs. It definitely sounds the most polished and refined.

Also, The Beatles: Rock Band, is a damn good visual representation of them, be it a night club or a trippy landscape. I highly recommend the game to fans, even though it's kind of expensive to get into.

I started out as more of a Stone fan and as someone here stated, when you dig deeper into their catalog, the music is so epic in scope that it never gets old, especially post Revolver.

Additionally, I have to show respect to George Harrison who's my favorite Beatle and one of my all time favorite song writers. His introspective, subdued songwriting was a nice contrast to the Lennon/McCartney work too. "Something" is possibly one of the most beautiful songs EVER written.

COMPUTERBLUE1984 said:

Timmy84 said:

Cinnie said:

Point is, Lennon/McCartney wrote the shit

And just because I prefer Marvin's version of "Yesterday" does NOT mean I'm gonna knock the originals. I have more respect for the Beatles now than I did probably two years ago. I'm not trying to be a snob on John, Paul, George & Ringo.

Timmy Marvin did a version of "The Long Winding Road too didn't he? I've heard his version a few times , do you have it?

AlexdeParis said:

COMPUTERBLUE1984 said:

I started out as more of a Stone fan and as someone here stated, when you dig deeper into their catalog, the music is so epic in scope that it never gets old, especially post Revolver.

Additionally, I have to show respect to George Harrison who's my favorite Beatle and one of my all time favorite song writers. His introspective, subdued songwriting was a nice contrast to the Lennon/McCartney work too. "Something" is possibly one of the most beautiful songs EVER written.

I'm also a huge George fan. His solo career is my favorite by a landslide, with All Things Must Pass easily besting all the other solo Beatles albums and Living in the Material World being third just behind Plastic Ono Band. Some of his Beatles songs ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Think for Yourself," "Something," "Here Comes the Sun") are some of the group's very best.

This thread needs more "heat". Come on, someone bait someone or say something controversial. Maybe a Madonna or Janet mention. Anyone?

AlexdeParis said:

Calling the Beatles overrated = understandable Not being a fan = no big deal Not liking some Beatles songs = ridiculous

^This. I think they're overrated and I'm definitely not a beatles fanatic but I like some of their songs, even the pointlessly silly lyrics in some are compensated by the great music

AlexdeParis said:

Calling the Beatles overrated = understandable Not being a fan = no big deal Not liking some Beatles songs = ridiculous

Yep

elmer said:

I'm not a Beatles hater, but Sgt Peppers and the the bloated White Album are way too talked up imo, and songs like Hey Jude/Let It Be/Yesterdays have this simple, jolly, singalong-ness that irritates me.

And I Love Her is beautiful.

In case you haven't heard them, the first two Lennon albums are pretty fuckin great, as good as any of the Beatles' albums.

I disagree with you regarding The Beatles, it's a pretty fantastic album. However, I wholeheartedly agree with you about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I think it gets a lot of praise for it's innovations in production techniques but song for song I think it is one of their weakest albums. "Within You Without You" really sucks the life out of the album and, "A Day In The Life" aside, John Lennon didn't write any great songs for it and as a result we got a little too many Paul McCartney songs.

It really baffles me that so much praise is heaped on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rubber Soul, Revolver, The Beatles and Abbey Road are all vastly superior albums. Even some of the earlier albums like A Hard Day's Night and Help feature much better songwriting than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

rialb said:

elmer said:

I'm not a Beatles hater, but Sgt Peppers and the the bloated White Album are way too talked up imo, and songs like Hey Jude/Let It Be/Yesterdays have this simple, jolly, singalong-ness that irritates me.

And I Love Her is beautiful.

In case you haven't heard them, the first two Lennon albums are pretty fuckin great, as good as any of the Beatles' albums.

I disagree with you regarding The Beatles, it's a pretty fantastic album. However, I wholeheartedly agree with you about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I think it gets a lot of praise for it's innovations in production techniques but song for song I think it is one of their weakest albums. "Within You Without You" really sucks the life out of the album and, "A Day In The Life" aside, John Lennon didn't write any great songs for it and as a result we got a little too many Paul McCartney songs.

It really baffles me that so much praise is heaped on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rubber Soul, Revolver, The Beatles and Abbey Road are all vastly superior albums. Even some of the earlier albums like A Hard Day's Night and Help feature much better songwriting than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I'm in the other boat. Revolver and The Beatles are the two most overrated Beatles albums IMO. They're wildly inconsistent in terms of song quality IMO (yes, that's kind of the point of the White Album, but still). "Revolution 9" is inexcusable and "Yellow Submarine" isn't much better. "Doctor Robert" isn't a favorite and the same goes for both "... Bungalow Bill" and "... Me and My Monkey." When those albums are great, they're excellent, but neither has the magic of Sgt. Pepper, which truly feels like an adventure that's greater than the sum of its parts.

AlexdeParis said:

I'm in the other boat. Revolver one of the most overrated Beatles albums IMO. wildly inconsistent in terms of song quality IMO (yes, that's kind of the point of the White Album, but still). "Revolution 9" is inexcusable and "Yellow Submarine" isn't much better. "Doctor Robert" isn't a favorite

You're the only one who thinks that

For me, Revolver CLEARLY has their BEST non-singles/album tracks of their ENTIRE CAREER: Love You Too, Here.There&Everywhere, Taxman, Good Day Sunshine, I'm Only Sleeping, She Said She Said, And Your Bird Can Sing, For No One, I Want to Tell You and Tomorrow Never Knows & Got To Get You Into My Life, woah, that's some underrated stuff...

Dr.Robert is the weakest track, but a "weak" (is funny enough) track doesn't mean that the album is bad . And YS is probably their best novelty number. Anyone who dislikes that song needs to lighten up

In addition, Revolver was the album that perfectly mixed the dry, acid sound of their early upbeat singles with a more experimental/harder touch, but avoiding the heavy psychodelia of 1967 or their late serious/pompous rock (Abbey Road, Let It Be, etc.)

My fav Beatles album

AlexdeParis said:

rialb said:

I disagree with you regarding The Beatles, it's a pretty fantastic album. However, I wholeheartedly agree with you about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I think it gets a lot of praise for it's innovations in production techniques but song for song I think it is one of their weakest albums. "Within You Without You" really sucks the life out of the album and, "A Day In The Life" aside, John Lennon didn't write any great songs for it and as a result we got a little too many Paul McCartney songs.

It really baffles me that so much praise is heaped on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rubber Soul, Revolver, The Beatles and Abbey Road are all vastly superior albums. Even some of the earlier albums like A Hard Day's Night and Help feature much better songwriting than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I'm in the other boat. Revolver and The Beatles are the two most overrated Beatles albums IMO. They're wildly inconsistent in terms of song quality IMO (yes, that's kind of the point of the White Album, but still). "Revolution 9" is inexcusable and "Yellow Submarine" isn't much better. "Doctor Robert" isn't a favorite and the same goes for both "... Bungalow Bill" and "... Me and My Monkey." When those albums are great, they're excellent, but neither has the magic of Sgt. Pepper, which truly feels like an adventure that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Fair enough. I should say that in general I am not a fan of the Beatles' "psychedelic" music (basically their output in 1967). Magical Mystery Tour and songs like "Only A Northern Song" and "It's All Too Much" also rank very low for me. I feel like at that time they were using studio trickery and experimentation as a substitute for good, solid songwriting. It seems like they were more into cool sounds and effects than the music. I'm certainly not going to defend "Revolution #9" but I quite like "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey" and "Doctor Robert." I also like that Revolver features some of their heavier songs ("And Your Bird Can Sing," "She Said She Said"). The only real stinker on Revolver is "Love You To" but at least it's over in about 2 1/2 minutes (unlike "Within You Without You" which lumbers along for over five minutes, an eternity back then). The Beatles probably has most of my favourite Paul McCartney songs of any Beatles album and I feel like him and John, for the most part, were really writing some killer songs. I also really dig the sprawl of the album. Most doubles from that era were only around 65-70 minutes of music and this one gives you over 90 minutes of (mostly) great stuff.

For me Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band features some pretty weak material ("Fixing A Hole," "Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!," "Within You Without You"). It has one extremely high point ("A Day In The Life") but otherwise the songs are either just good or below average (in terms of the Beatles' catalog). Is it more cohesive than Revolver or The Beatles? Maybe you have a point there but for me the songs are pretty weak. As I said before I "blame" John Lennon for the poor quality of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. To me it seems like he was pretty disinterested in the whole thing and was not submitting top drawer material for the album, with the exception of "A Day In The Life."

JoeTyler said:

AlexdeParis said:

I'm in the other boat. Revolver one of the most overrated Beatles albums IMO. wildly inconsistent in terms of song quality IMO (yes, that's kind of the point of the White Album, but still). "Revolution 9" is inexcusable and "Yellow Submarine" isn't much better. "Doctor Robert" isn't a favorite

You're the only one who thinks that

For me, Revolver CLEARLY has their BEST non-singles/album tracks of their ENTIRE CAREER: Love You Too, Here.There&Everywhere, Taxman, Good Day Sunshine, I'm Only Sleeping, She Said She Said, And Your Bird Can Sing, For No One, I Want to Tell You and Tomorrow Never Knows & Got To Get You Into My Life, woah, that's some underrated stuff...

Dr.Robert is the weakest track, but a "weak" (is funny enough) track doesn't mean that the album is bad . And YS is probably their best novelty number. Anyone who dislikes that song needs to lighten up

The best non-singles are on Rubber Soul.

They have plenty novelty songs that are much better than "Yellow Submarine": "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!," "Piggies," "Octopus's Garden," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Magical Mystery Tour," even the oft-maligned "Maxwell's Silver Hammer."

rialb said:

AlexdeParis said:

I'm in the other boat. Revolver and The Beatles are the two most overrated Beatles albums IMO. They're wildly inconsistent in terms of song quality IMO (yes, that's kind of the point of the White Album, but still). "Revolution 9" is inexcusable and "Yellow Submarine" isn't much better. "Doctor Robert" isn't a favorite and the same goes for both "... Bungalow Bill" and "... Me and My Monkey." When those albums are great, they're excellent, but neither has the magic of Sgt. Pepper, which truly feels like an adventure that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Fair enough. I should say that in general I am not a fan of the Beatles' "psychedelic" music (basically their output in 1967). Magical Mystery Tour and songs like "Only A Northern Song" and "It's All Too Much" also rank very low for me.

As you can tell by the list I posted, those are all favorites of mine.

"Within You, Without You" is my favorite of George's Indian-inspired songs. I used to be a little lukewarm on it for a long time, but what really brought me around was the excellent mash-up with "Tomorrow Never Knows" on Love. Now I enjoy the original almost as much.

Harlepolis said:

3. The song Ballad Of John Lennon & Yoko Ono

I always thought this song sounded more plastic ono band then the beatles. Certainly the writing was on the wall with that song. Great song though.

AlexdeParis said:

rialb said:

Fair enough. I should say that in general I am not a fan of the Beatles' "psychedelic" music (basically their output in 1967). Magical Mystery Tour and songs like "Only A Northern Song" and "It's All Too Much" also rank very low for me.

As you can tell by the list I posted, those are all favorites of mine.

"Within You, Without You" is my favorite of George's Indian-inspired songs. I used to be a little lukewarm on it for a long time, but what really brought me around was the excellent mash-up with "Tomorrow Never Knows" on Love. Now I enjoy the original almost as much.

That's one of the great things about the Beatles, they certainly pushed themselves to try many different styles of music. I may not like them all equally but I admire the fact that they did not stick to any single sound.

For me, and I'm no Beatles expert by any means, I only became a fan last year at the ages of 27. They start to get really good around A Hard Day's Night and Help! and then when Rubber Soul kicks in it's pure class through to The Beatles. Still working on that album. Not as melodic as their previous efforts but still better than Let It Be and Abbey Road imo.

I love their 'psychedelic' period the most. 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'A Day In The Life' are timeless classics that show their true songwriting genius.

[Edited 6/8/10 3:08am]

AlexdeParis said:

COMPUTERBLUE1984 said:

I started out as more of a Stone fan and as someone here stated, when you dig deeper into their catalog, the music is so epic in scope that it never gets old, especially post Revolver.

Additionally, I have to show respect to George Harrison who's my favorite Beatle and one of my all time favorite song writers. His introspective, subdued songwriting was a nice contrast to the Lennon/McCartney work too. "Something" is possibly one of the most beautiful songs EVER written.

I'm also a huge George fan. His solo career is my favorite by a landslide, with All Things Must Pass easily besting all the other solo Beatles albums and Living in the Material World being third just behind Plastic Ono Band. Some of his Beatles songs ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Think for Yourself," "Something," "Here Comes the Sun") are some of the group's very best.

I agree!

I've been watching the "Anthology" documentary recently(Thanx again, Cinnie). And as prolific as the Lennon/McCartney body of work was, I have to say that I didn't care for Paul & John's dismissive attitude toward George's writing, "He's only a guitar player".

Needless to say, I think his writing perfectly balances the Lennon/McCartney songbook.

P.S. Great documentary!!!!

sosgemini said:

This thread needs more "heat". Come on, someone bait someone or say something controversial. Maybe a Madonna or Janet mention. Anyone?

The Beatles (specifically John & Paul) were the first recording artists to ever throw up The Baphomet hand sign ( ) AND the 666 sign (The OK sign). This incident counted as the earliest warning giving out to the public on what exactly was running the industry.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Light years before Michael & 2pac, John Lennon was an earlier artist that dare to rebel against TPTB. Imagine was that very song he used to inspired people to think what the world could be like if religions & politics did NOT exist.

John was murdered in December 1980. Yes, we all know the story that he was murdered by the "lone nut" Mark David Chapman. But the one part of the story that was NEVER told is the fact that the FBI & (especially) the CIA always knew that John's life was in danger throughout the 1970's and they did absolute nothing to save him.

@ everyone else......Well, Gemini wanted someone to say something controversial. He got it.

GET THE WHITE ALBUM!!!!!!!

TonyVanDam said:

sosgemini said:

This thread needs more "heat". Come on, someone bait someone or say something controversial. Maybe a Madonna or Janet mention. Anyone?

The Beatles (specifically John & Paul) were the first recording artists to ever throw up The Baphomet hand sign ( ) AND the 666 sign (The OK sign). This incident counted as the earliest warning giving out to the public on what exactly was running the industry.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Light years before Michael & 2pac, John Lennon was an earlier artist that dare to rebel against TPTB. Imagine was that very song he used to inspired people to think what the world could be like if religions & politics did NOT exist.

John was murdered in December 1980. Yes, we all know the story that he was murdered by the "lone nut" Mark David Chapman. But the one part of the story that was NEVER told is the fact that the FBI & (especially) the CIA always knew that John's life was in danger throughout the 1970's and they did absolute nothing to save him.

@ everyone else......Well, Gemini wanted someone to say something controversial. He got it.

Tony, Ringo said that Elvis sicked the CIA on them too, because he saw them as a threat to him.

Harlepolis said:

Tony, Ringo said that Elvis sicked the CIA on them too, because he saw them as a threat to him.

THAT^ is the first I've ever heard a rumor or story like that. I always knew that Elvis (who was also a USA government agent) didn't like John on a personal level. But to point of getting the CIA involve?!? That was a total bitch move!

See there, I find myself losing some respect for Elvis all over again.

i'm still scurrred to take the plunge. me thinks they're overrated. i feel overwhelmed as to where to start. (ESP. after it was recommended that i get the Rio album from D2 only to find out why the singles were what they were as the other tracks are average filler at best, but i digress). i think my suspicions will be confirmed not to mention i don't like their voices to begin with

datdude said:

i'm still scurrred to take the plunge. me thinks they're overrated. i feel overwhelmed as to where to start. (ESP. after it was recommended that i get the Rio album from D2 only to find out why the singles were what they were as the other tracks are average filler at best, but i digress). i think my suspicions will be confirmed not to mention i don't like their voices to begin with

I was the one who recommended Rio. If you don't see the brilliance in the half of the album that weren't singles, well, maybe you just don't like Duran Duran. Songs like "Lonely in Your Nightmare" and "The Chauffeur" are way better than "average filler." They even went through the trouble of making videos for those two particular songs.