2020 Beatles Bible Bracket Challenge | Page 13 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

sir walter raleigh said
Happiness Is A Warm Gun vs Dear Prudence

She Said She Said vs If I Needed Someone

Glass Onion vs Sg.t Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

You Never Give Me Your Money vs While My Guitar Gently Weeps

The scarily dominant personality of John in the White Album is what makes him such a focal point through the tracklist of that record. Dear Prudence is not about romance. And somehow Prudence, the main subject of the song, doesn’t feel like a significant other. Instead, we get the oeuvre of a man that has so many feeling, he decides to grant them to Prudence. The narrator sounds like an entity, observing a person that he knows could be more than special if she took the initiative. It is an encouragement song, and it embodies the emotion more than the story. John is almost shouting the lyrics, like he desperately wants Prudence to pay attention but he is unable to reach her. He takes “roses are red” and manages to swirl George’s guitar around the lyrics to make them sound like the most profound and sincere rhyme ever sang. We can hear deep voices chanting “look around” approximately through the middle of the song, giving a dark tone once it really starts progressing. Then as it accelerates the narrator furiously and happily breaks that wall between them, until the last cymbal hits, and then Prudence is no longer trapped. It is the loudest noise of calm. Later in the album, Happiness Is A Warm Gun appears out of nowhere. A song assembled as John’s heroin addiction manifesting through stages. John constantly introduces new melodies, or new hooks that don’t mean anything but paint clear pictures of terror and mystery. The smokey atmosphere of the song is indestructible. In the way he introduces one of the most badass guitar riffs of all time, “I need a fix, ‘cause I’m going down”. Finally he decides to introduce a pseudo-chorus, adding backing vocals performed by himself as well. He doesn’t blink while the tempo variates, adding a groovy personality to an already ever-changing track. It is hard to rank the creativity of what are songs that could shame any material a band contemporary to the Beatles could offer. I’m gonna go with the one that works as a unique entity. Dear Prudence seems to be the choice to go. Given that Happiness Is A Warm Gun at points could be describe as a mix of three or four musical pieces, clearly divided in sections. The evolution of it is not as organic, and its climax isn’t nearly as ear grabbing. Not that those four songs wouldn’t already be some of the best songs ever written, mind you. Yet, in the end, Dear Prudence doesn’t have to do anything but be itself.

If I Needed Someone is one of George earliest successes as a songwriter. He finally understood how to assemble the different elements that make a song appealing and applying the style of the band to it. Such as Ringo’s love for the tambourine, or the three part harmonies, the evolution of a riff into a chord progression. He is stepping up and writing efforts that could perfectly be composition for his bandmates. It is a strong leap in self-awareness, and effortlessly builds a particular atmosphere inside the album. I’ve always regarded it as the most underrated song in Rubber Soul . It doesn’t sound like George’s previous contributions. This was probably the first that felt like it deserved its spot in an album. So it seems unfair to compare it to She Said She Said , one of the most realized, iconic and free-flowing songs of the band’s career. She Said She Said might as well be the track that represents Revolver as a whole. It is a perfect balance of pop sensibilities but unbelievable creativity, and it defined an entire sound that the band seemed to had been building up to. It doesn’t force breakthroughs into it to make it a potential career-defining song if any other artist would’ve come up with it. It doesn’t bravely feature strings like Eleanor Rigby to impress people, or weird edits like Strawberry Fields Forever , or vocals like the ones in Because , worked over and over again until it was perfect. She Said She Said is flawless, yet it shows it wasn’t that complicated to write or record. Just give them a drum set, a bass, an electric guitar and put them in a room. They’ll create your career’s biggest hit. Ringo’s drumming spaces the sections in the song like they were close friends, and with every section the songs turns groovier. The lyrics are so insightful. How is one expected to react after hearing those drum fills and have John Lennon shouting in your ear “She said, I know what it’s like to be dead” right at the beginning. She Said She Said makes you capable of perceiving the waves of sound spinning through your ears, that is literally what the song sounds like. It is definitely one of their best, and I have to pick it over If I Needed Someone , as good as that George track is.

Mostly a fight between Beatles two big pieces of Beatles cannon references. “Here’s another place you can go, where everything flows”. Glass Onion is just that, a song by the Beatles, about the Beatles. Lennon shows his disattachment to the Beatles cult of personality by trying to not bank in his previous efforts, but rather building upon them. He mocks the obsession of his fanbase around meaningless plots in his songs. “Here’s another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul”. If I’m not mistaken that lyrics was written before John revealed that I Am The Walrus was just a scheme to fool hipsters into analyzing it, so the lyrics, at the moment, were a secret way for him to tell you he was fooling you. Now it’s different, because we now the end of the story, but picturing back then in the context of the release of the White Album is quite badass. It is scary the way in which he literally sings about it in a very self-aware way. It is one of the few cases in the Beatles’ discography in which meta-writing is clearly referenced. But the point of the song isn’t to try to spark a sense of recognition from the listener and lazily write a song around it, given the song has a point different to what it may seem at first. “Here’s another place you can be, listen to me”, he implores to the listener. That is what he is saying. You want more meaningless horse shit you can repeat to make yourself look cultured? Here’s a Glass Onion , make something of it. It is a very smart lyrics, with beautiful imagery. We see Lucy in the sky, The Fool On The Hill , the fixing of a hole, the strawberry fields. It is quite stunning as a multi-faceted referential piece of art. It is one of those instances in which Lennon throws a pack of creativity at the wall and it sticks. Yet, Sgt. Pepper ’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a true original. One of the best openers to any album ever. We hear the instruments being tuned just before Paul essential screams at as: are you ready for a show? What is the Sgt. Pepper ’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? It doesn’t matter, have your heard that guitar? Let’s pay attention to what these guys have to say. Glass Onion is filled with originality despite all of its references, but the intro of Sgt. Pepper is the actual thing you would go back and reference in the first place, because it is so iconic, yet so good on its own right. As much as you try, you can only create this unique cultural landmarks without trying. Sgt. Pepper ’s Lonely Hearts Club Band could’ve been just a silly idea a band had once and nobody remembers, it would still be fantastic, but the fact that it is so recognizable, and characteristic is what puts it above a cut like Glass Onion .

In While My Guitar Gently Weeps George decides to write a chord progression that isn’t too experimental and blow it out of proportion. It has to be epic. He adds in three types of guitars, including one by Eric Clapton, the drums and bass drive slowly, with fills that consistent on simple 2/4 hits, just a much as the sounds in the song, and an organ and a piano mark notes that stand as hard as stones, stumbling upon the song as if it is the place they’ve been always looking for. It’s a powerful song, deserving its praise among the best track in the White Album . You Never Give Me Your Money is pretty much an Abbey Road track, looking for a connection between fallen pieces and rejoining them as one. This track has some of the smoothest transitions made in any Beatles song. It is the start of the famous Abbey Road medley, but many people fail to see it is a little medley of its own. You Never Give Me Your Money , as many spots in McCartney’s career, understands that a song is like an art film: it’s all about the journey, where you have been, where you are now, where you will go next. It has just the right amount of instruments. Every moment is flavored by a unique piece of sound that expands this overwhelming sense of sunshine killing any bacteria that might grow around the song. A song only feels awkward when it feels forced. Like, for instance, a main piece of lyric depicting a guitar “gently” weeping. What does “gently” mean? It is a weirdly specific and kind of pretentious writing chop. How much meaning has a lyric like “I don’t know why you someone controlled you, they bought and sold you”. It doesn’t feel like true poetry, but like a decent imitation. Paul, for all his faults, truly had a knack for writing pieces that felt not only like deep moments in his songs, but also common phrases one would use. He could turn the ordinary into extraordinary. “Out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent”, that is an insightful line. McCartney works it into the song by devaluating the meaning of the words themselves and putting them along with different topics, in the end creating good-sounding phrases instead of convoluted pieces of over-indulgence. Who goes into the shower and mumbles “I don’t know how you were diverted, you were perverted too. I don’t know how you were inverted, no one alerted you”? Not me. “One sweet dream. Pick up the bags and get in the limousine. Soon we’ll be away from here. Step on the gas and wipe that tear away. One sweet dream, came true, today”. Apart from this lyrical wonder, the song goes through two piano melodies, three guitar riffs, four drumming changes, a harmonic bridge, an instrumental break, and a melodic outro: “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven – all good children go to the heaven”. In under four minutes. It amazes me the way in which words are being painted over this hard rock canvas. This arbitrary brushstrokes create this coherent piece not because they look alike, but because they are painted with the same amount of energy. While My Guitar Gently Weeps stays in the same place, awkwardly variating between that minor chord progression and that major chord progression. The latter I’ve always found to be a bit of an underwhelming moment in the song, to be honest. You Never Give Me Your Money is a straightforward, ever evolving, tangibly creative song. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is self-absorbed enough to cancel out whichever of this qualities it may appear to have at first. As good as the song may be, it just feels too insecure to match up to Paul’s confidence.

I’ve honestly had so much fun writing this long-ass detailed explanations that I don’t know what am I gonna do in the next round, given I would essentially be talking about songs I’ve already talked about.