Worst Beatles song on Abbey Road

xp ugh wrong wrong wrong

this thread sucks

I hadn't heard ATMP until I was in my late 20s, though I knew the radio hits. Love most of it (never actually listened to "Apple Jam"), don't dislike any of it, and significant chunks are superior to most of Let It Be and some of the White album. "Wah Wah" in particular has some dynamite Ringo playing on it.

And this Harrison tune should've been on the White album even with Lomax singing, a la "Lose This Skin" on Sandinista!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEJBItLnw5I

xp ugh wrong wrong wrong

― brimstead, Tuesday, October 11, 2016 4:13 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol which post

the one about "sun king" and "because" being bad songs

i would like to disagree with the idea upthread that "something" has a bad bridge. imo it's the best part of the song

a lot of it's down to the arrangement though, how the percussion and strings just start moving around furiously

'Because' has often been the track from this album that I find myself playing a lot on repeat... I really, really love those vocal harmonies and the general atmosphere/vibe of the track. The a cappella version on Anthology 3 is gorgeous too.

"Because" is great. yes the atmosphere....those arpeggios... i love the Switched On instrumentation. song itself is very Yoko Ono. harmonies are wonderful, up there with "Smile".

Sour milk sea is so fucking good

I've never liked it tbh, always sounds like a halfway point between Savoy Truffle and Get Back to me

this would have been a much much better album with HCTS as the lead track. oh well

i don't think you can pin 'much much better' on sequencing

maybe 'better', maybe even 'much better', but not double much

Glad to read this discussion today. I think I might like Abbey Road as much as the White Album if it had been recorded with the same gear. It's like there's a sonic space that opens up on this album and maybe the Beatles didn't realize that they weren't filling up the space because the way they arranged things would have done so on the old technology. There were bands in the '70s who got this and were able to fill up the space with more color - like say "Calling Occupants" off the first Klaatu album. A lot of Klaatu, actually.

otm

Well yeah, obviously, since Klaatu was the Beatles.

Obviously!

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b6/59/75/b659755676fc19515270d55baaf819c0.jpg

This LP sounds far more warmer and fuller to me than the white album, without a doubt.

fwiw i don't think the white album sounds very warm or full at all, it's very abrasive and raw sounding. i just like the hodgepodge nature of it and the expansiveness over the concision of abbey road.

yeah yeah its supposed indie virtue ("check it out, the beatles are 'fucked up'")

"they just don't give a fuck"

but as someone whose favorite FM album is tusk, i feel ya

although take out lindsey's amphetamine workouts and tusk really isn't all that weird, imo

it's not that. i hate pavement. i think the raw & abrasive qualities of the white album are very purposeful. it's part of the wildly paranoid and unhinged atmosphere and drive of that record.

anyway. ill stay out of here. we all love the beatles :)

xp otm about tusk's weirdness - also it's not just Lindsey's songs that make it weird, it's the stark contrast between his songs and Stevie's and Christine's that makes it so bewildering.

was it really purposeful, though? how much did george martin and geoff emerick's absence contribute?

it's sloppy and disjointed because they didn't want to work together anymore!

that too!

well certainly the sequencing is pretty abrasive, and like tusk, the record is weirder for its contrasts - Mother Nature's Son next to Me and My Monkey, Good Night after Revolution 9... the songs with 'raw' production are mostly Lennon's, with the exception of Helter Skelter, which was a very purposeful attempt to make a more raucous record than The Who. But like Glass Onion for example, that's a very rough around the edges song that is greatly benefited from the orchestra loops that Martin added. Even Happiness is a Warm Gun, recorded live, sounds loose and raw, and that was the one moment during the entire recording of the white album where the band was getting along.

Also, lyrically, the songs are much darker and scattershot than on Abbey Road.

Lennon's lyrics were all pretty scattershot from '67-'71 or so. He probably didn't feel this way but musically I think his stuff really benefited from restraints applied by the others (whether it was Paul or George Martin or whoever) and more considered arrangements. I know he loved to rock out and keep it real and all that rockist shit but Dear Prudence and Mean Mr. Mustard are a good deal improved by the other's contributions imo.

Musically, solo Lennon never approached his Beatles work. Nothing even remotely like Strawberry Fields or Walrus there.

this is a discussion for a different thread but generally I agree. The strange rhythmic turnarounds and relatively ambitious structures that regularly appear in his Beatles work p much completely disappeared from his songwriting after 1970. I think I've commented on this before somewhere around here.

I think Plastic Ono Band and half of Imagine are up there w his best Beatles work, but yeah after that it's a steep decline.

Agreed completely re: Lennon's rockist tendencies. That's why most of his solo records are so abysmal. so many Chuck Berry rewrites.

and again, Glass Onion is a great example. There's a no-strings version on Anthology I think, and it sucks. Tuneless w/ no personality - but those perfectly placed orchestra loops completely elevate it.

this is a discussion for a different thread but generally I agree. The strange rhythmic turnarounds and relatively ambitious structures that regularly appear in his Beatles work p much completely disappeared from his songwriting after 1970. I think I've commented on this before somewhere around here.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, October 12, 2016 4:29 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fortunately these appear on Yoko's albums

Shakey OTM re: Lennon's stuff benefitting from restraints from others and others helping to get the best out of his material. Once Lennon was out of The Beatles, his gift for melody didn't disappear, it's more that he developed a solo style and... didn't really move very far from it.

fortunately these appear on Yoko's albums

totally!

There's one or two tracks on, say, Mind Games which would have been great in the hands of The Beatles and George Martin, but as they are they come across as "solo Lennon by numbers"

compare w/McCartney, who never really stopped trying to push himself musically (or at least never shied away from the kind of ambition he showed in the Beatles)... but missed out on the Beatles' quality control process. This is why people continue to make "lost Beatle album" compilations from the 70s songs -- it just seems like they could have gone on making good stuff if they'd been able to hang on, professionally.

def a "greater than the sum of their parts" scenario

weirdly Lennon's the only one who made two albums I consider great all the way through - POB + Imagine. (The rest get one apiece - Ringo, ATMP, Ram)

and then of course there's the Yoko albums and Pussycats... maybe I'm talking myself into a more positive appraisal of Lennon's solo stuff than I wanted to admit

McCartney's weak spot was always his lyrics and occasionally failing to recognise when he'd written a dud. His gifts for coming up with catchy melodies and ensuring his songs are arranged and recorded well have never left him, really.

Band On The Run!

has a bunch of crap on it!

His gifts for coming up with catchy melodies and ensuring his songs are arranged and recorded well have never left him, really.

no argument here though, he def eclipsed the others in this dept.

Yes, I've just bought that for someone, so I've been listening to it a lot. So many of the songs are so flimsy and overlong. (xp)

despite that I am generally a bigger McCartney fan than a Lennon one, I don't rep for any of his solo records as being great all the way through. JL/POB is the single best Beatles solo IMO, and both Imagine and All Things are really good -- about as good as the best McCartney record in fact -- but not as classic as, say, the 3rd or 4th best Beatles record.

McCartney II tho

sad that Gone Troppo is always overlooked when people discuss the best solo Beatles album