Tag Archives: the beatles

My iPod #41: The Beatles – Another Girl

1 Reply


Alright. So, if you read my post yesterday, you know that I am 18 years old! Woot woot.

I still feel the same though. Does everyone else wake up when it’s their birthday and just think, ‘well, what now?’ I thought that by turning eighteen I would feel some sense of freedom or intellectual gain, that hasn’t happened so far. Meh. Life goes on.

Yeah yeah, The Beatles were great blah blah blah.

‘Another Girl’ is a bright and peppy song of the band’s album ‘Help!’. Paul McCartney takes the lead on this, also filling the role as the lead guitarist. He’s the one doing all the random licks during the verses and chorus.

The band also play along with the song in a kind of music video, this can be seen in their movie also named ‘Help!’. It’s all fun and games with the Fab Four. The guys are in the Bahamas fooling around, John starts playing the drums and Ringo tries to the play the guitar, George starts throwing rocks at the other members, Paul almost touches a girl’s noob whilst ‘strumming’ her like a bass. It’s all good times in 1965.

‘Help!’ won’t be that album that The Beatles are most known for, but it’s still got some good tunes. This is a highlight.

Happy birthday to me and Pharrell Williams.

RIP Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #38: The Beatles – And Your Bird Can Sing

Leave a reply


1966 was a good year for England. The football team won the World Cup, Tony Adams was born, and The Beatles unveiled their seventh album to the world. Except for the USA, who wouldn’t hear the album in its original form until the remastered CD in 1987.

Revolver. My favourite album by The Beatles. One of my favourite albums by any band.

Where can I start? I think that everything I would say about it has been said by almost every reviewer there is. I’ll leave it to you lot to find out what they say.

Upon seeing the Beatles light in 2009, I went on any site where I could download their whole discography. ‘Revolver’ was one of their first albums I downloaded, and then I didn’t know what to think of it. I’ve said many times that it takes a few listens to appreciate each song individually, resulting in an accumulated appreciation for the album as a whole. This was another of those times.

I think the fact that the songs were so short was something that made the album seem really quick to me. I would be listening to a song, and then it would finish and it was onto the next one. It was hard to get into something when the last chord faded out before your ears.

‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ was one example. Barely over two minutes, it’s one of the shortest songs.

Listening to it again and again though, I finally understood why the song was so sick. Sick is good. Now, it’s come to a point that when I see the cover, I either think of the fake countdown at the beginning of ‘Taxman’ or the introduction of this song.

It’s actually one of the more ‘basic?’ pieces of the album. A straight-forward rocker written by Lennon, with dual-guitar solos by both George Harrison AND Paul McCartney, Ringo doing his stuff on the drums. It;s just a really cheerful song, with hubris at its finest in the lyrics:

‘You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is
And your bird can swing, but you can’t hear me
You can’t hear- MEEEEEEE.’

It’s just a huge ‘You suck. I’m great’ message. It’s brilliant. It’s everything you want musically and lyrically, and it’s only done in a short amount of time.

Then ‘For No One’ starts. Then you need to get the tissues. For drying your eyes.

It was clear that the band was a world away from their mop-top mania stage and had already embraced their dive into the unknown. That’s why they’re so great you know? They changed their sound on every album and they still sounded good! JESUS.

Revolver forever.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #7: The Beatles – Across the Universe

1 Reply


“Let it A.. Let it B, Let it C… Let it D! Let it F-G-H-I-K… douba-wubba-wubba U-G!”

Say what you want about The Beatles. “Pfff…. they’re so overrated, what did Paul McCartney ever do for me?” or “I’m only 8 years old, and I’ve listened to The Beatles allllll my liiiiife.” :/

Well, whatever you do say I don’t care. All I know is that The Beatles are included a lot on my iPod. There will probably be a few songs of theirs coming up in this ‘A’ series of “My iPod” that I’m doing.

Seeing as this the first of many Beatle songs that I have, I should probably start with when I really began to start listening to them and eventually became a victim of their continuing legacy that carries on throughout the years.

It started back in July 2009…. I had my YouTube channel (it was called jamzftw but it got removed so don’t try and look for it). On there, I would just a whole bunch of albums that I liked, upload them and watch the views roll in.

Now here’s something that may sound stupid to you…. I didn’t actually think that The Beatles were real. Hahaha ha ha ha hahahaha I know! Silly, right?

But I had always heard about the hype about Sgt. Pepper, and how it was the best album ever according to….. everyone in the world, really.

So I wondered what all the hubbub was about and downloaded it. Just to see what was so good.

I was 14 at the time. And at the time, I wasn’t really impressed. I didn’t know that they originally sang ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, the end chord at the end of ‘A Day in the Life’ was cool and the only song that I got into was ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ out of all of them. And it’s still my favourite now.

I uploaded the album onto YouTube. And that was it.

A few months later, VH1 Classic started this programme called Beatlemania. I think this was due to the 09/09/09 remasters coming out, but at the time I didn’t know that this was happening.

That was the first time that I had actually witnessed their music videos on the TV. MTV2 never showed them, and this was when MTV still showed music instead of reality television. I saw ‘Hey Bulldog’ for the first time, ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘The Night Before’ among others.

To cut a long story short, I downloaded all their albums. Let It Be was probably the last one. I would say that ‘Across the Universe’ is a favourite of mine from the album, and the better version out of those on ‘Past Masters‘ and ‘Let It Be… Naked‘.

I really like The Beatles. I’m glad that I found out that they actually existed.

Until next time.

Jamie