beatles

#76: Getting Better

Anthony Cusumano, ,

We’re currently living in a world overcome by a virus that has disrupted every component of our lives, racial injustice and unrest, and the threat of a Kanye West presidency. Let’s not sugarcoat it: things are awfully bleak. Nobody really knew how to cope.

And then on July 23, Taylor Swift announced the imminent release of her new album, Folklore, and it served as a reminder that it really is getting better all the time.

folklore
That’s right, I’m using a Taylor Swift album as an excuse for being too lazy to write an entry for the last two months.

 

In this cheery, optimistic highlight from Sgt. Pepper, John and Paul mix clever wordplay (“It can’t get no worse”) with Continue reading “#76: Getting Better” →

#76: Getting Better

#77: This Boy

Anthony Cusumano, ,

Krispy Kreme donuts. The “Mr. Plow” episode of The Simpsons. The Beatles’ harmonies.

“What are three things that are pretty great, Alex?”

For all the division in our society in modern times, I think we as a collective can agree that all of those things are all quite exceptional. (Four if you count Alex Trebek.) I don’t know if it’s possible to gush too much about how amazing the Beatles’ harmonies were, but over the course of their seven-year recording career, John, Paul, and George united in three-part harmony just three times. “This Boy” was the earliest and best–I’ve never liked the maudlin “Yes It Is,” and “Because” is gorgeous, but the longing, impassioned “This Boy” is the greatest Smokey Robinson song he never wrote.

One of my favorite parts of the Beatles’ harmonies, and one of the reasons I wish they had more songs like these, is that Continue reading “#77: This Boy” →

#77: This Boy

#78: Any Time at All

Anthony Cusumano, ,

When pressed to name my top five Beatles albums, the list is fairly standard, minus the absence of the overrated Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. At the top is the White Album, perhaps for sheer volume more than pound-for-pound quality. The next three, in order, are Abbey Road, Revolver, and Rubber Soul. These four constitute perhaps the band’s most experimental, risk-taking works, so naturally rounding out the top five is A Hard Day’s Night, in all its “if Beatlemania ain’t broke, don’t fix it” glory.

For their third album, the Beatles were in no mood to rewrite the rulebook that had led to such incredible international success. But in between the release of predecessor With the Beatles and recording its follow-up, something happened: Continue reading “#78: Any Time at All” →

#78: Any Time at All

#79: The Inner Light

Anthony Cusumano, ,

There’s a certain joy and comfort in discovering that someone else shares an uncommon habit or preference of yours. When I find a person who also acknowledges that cereal is far superior without milk, I know I’ve found an ally who will pick up a spoon and go to war with me.

capncrunch
Bring me the head of Cap’n Crunch.

 

Seemingly even rarer than my fellow dry cereal enthusiasts are those who appreciate Continue reading “#79: The Inner Light” →

#79: The Inner Light

#80: I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party

Anthony Cusumano, ,

Is this the world’s first emo song? Add in some Cookie Monster screams and apply a bit of black eyeliner to John Lennon and “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” becomes the greatest prom anthem of the early 2010s. Well, I guess you may need to de-twang it about 75% first, but the point stands.

Recently, I sang the praises of the unheralded Beatles for Sale album, and a large part of why I love it so much is Continue reading “#80: I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” →

#80: I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party

#81: Twist and Shout

Anthony Cusumano, ,

Let’s get one thing out of the way regarding “Twist and Shout”: if those opening moments don’t instantly instill a desire within you to hijack a German parade, I don’t think I want to know you.

reservoirdogs
And if hearing “Stuck in the Middle With You” doesn’t immediately compel you to cut off someone’s ear, we need to talk.

 

If memory serves me, my initial interest in seeing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was because of the Beatles connection, and it became my second favorite movie of all time and I recreated Ferris’s day off shortly after moving to Chicago, so I owe a lot to “Twist and Shout.” And to think, Continue reading “#81: Twist and Shout” →

#81: Twist and Shout

#82: Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

Anthony Cusumano, ,

Back in the earliest days of my Beatles obsession, I had relatively limited access to their music. My parents were never big fans, so the only albums I was able to inherit from them were my dad’s vinyl copies of the Red and Blue compilations. During a record shopping excursion in Philadelphia, I was elated to come across Abbey Road on vinyl for the bargain price of $2.98. It turned out that it skipped at the very end of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” resulting in the final line of that song repeating ad nauseum (“Sunday’s on the phone to Monday, Tuesday’s on the phone to *vrrp* Sunday’s on the phone to Monday, Tuesday’s…”)

In order to get a taste of the rest of the catalog in those pre-YouTube, pre-Spotify days, I turned to 30-second samples on Amazon and Yahoo. Digging through the band’s early albums, the song titles were a lot less attention-grabbing than the ones found on the White Album–from the seemingly nonsensical “Glass Onion” to the curiously misspelled “Yer Blues,” there was Continue reading “#82: Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” →

#82: Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

#83: I’m Happy Just to Dance with You

Anthony Cusumano, ,

America fell in love with the Beatles via the purest of requests in December 1963: “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” But just six months later, they made it clear that that was no longer enough to satisfy their insatiable lust.

“I don’t want to kiss or hold your hand,” George Harrison plainly stated as parents undoubtedly rushed to Continue reading “#83: I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” →

#83: I’m Happy Just to Dance with You

#84: All My Loving

Anthony Cusumano, ,

In the decade after the Beatles broke up, John Lennon gave two extended interviews, one in 1972 and the other shortly before his death in 1980, in which he provided background info and offered commentary on nearly every Lennon/McCartney composition ever released. A recurring theme during these conversations was his desire to distance himself from his former songwriting partner’s contributions, with his hatred for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (Paul “did everything to make it into a single, and it never was and it never could have been”) and writing off “When I’m Sixty-Four” with a curt “I would never even dream of writing a song like that” as two of the more egregious examples. Even when he liked a song of Paul’s, he seemed content in complimenting it and moving on.

romanpolanski
Whereas when I like a Beatles song, I have to write 400 words about it and shoehorn unnecessary references to celebrity sex offenders. Your turn, Roman Polanski!

 

One telling remark slipped out, though, when he Continue reading “#84: All My Loving” →

#84: All My Loving

#85: I’m a Loser

Anthony Cusumano, ,

It’s funny; for an album as historically dismissed as Beatles for Sale, I haven’t written about any of its tracks in quite some time. It’s been over two years and 89 songs in fact, when “Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey!” popped up at #174. Only four of the album’s 14 songs ranked lower, all of them covers, incidentally enough. That means that Beatles for Sale makes up an impressive 10% of the top 90 songs, a feat topped only by The White Album (which contains more than twice as many songs).

That “I’m a Loser” is the album’s lowest-ranking original is actually a testament to how Continue reading “#85: I’m a Loser” →

#85: I’m a Loser