Worst Beatles song on Magical Mystery Tour

lose

C'mon, people! "Blue Jay Way" is the loser!

But "Blue Jay Way" is prime George! One of his best psychedelic songs, actually.

Blue Jay Way is fantastic! A Beatles fiend in LA actually took me driving up to Blue Jay Way, and we got totally lost and confused, and had to just imagine poor George sitting up there among the trees tripping his face off, wondering where his friends had got to...

As you know, I am utterly Against Drugs and all that, but so much of this music doesn't *truly* make sense until you hear it in that context.

OK, I have become everything I hate and I'm going to STFU now.

I find Hello Goodbye really irritating.

But the coda!

flying, eleavator music

I'm expecting Your Mother Should Know to win/lose this poll; it seems like the most lightweight and pointless of Paul's attempts at writing "songs my mum and dad would like" (which peaks with Martha My Dear and troughs with Honey Pie, in my mind). This sums up my thoughts on this aspect of Paul Exactly. Your Mother Should Go.

I find "Hello Goodbye" OK, but the coda is just annoying.

I'm not really into 'Fool On The Hill', but hearing Oasis pointlessly swipe the title for some brainless lyric made me realise that no, there are worse things on earth than throwaway McCartney.

Geir actually did just get an SB for that.

I'm not really into 'Fool On The Hill', but hearing Oasis pointlessly swipe the title for some brainless lyric made me realise that no, there are worse things on earth than throwaway McCartney.

I love "Fool On The Hill". The melody is beautiful, and I kind of like the lyrics too. Wondering if "The Fool On The Hill" and "Mad John" are actually the same person :)

Xpost. Paul died on Wednesday morning at 5am, November 9, 1966 after storming out of a Pepper recording session! Geez, get your facts straight!

"Wednesday morning at 5 o clock as the day begins..."

"Bye, bye..."

That explains the Scottish accent on 'When I'm 64' too, I suppose.

"Messily spread all across the road
Leaving the band to carry on alone
He ran outside to the bus stop clutching his Hohner bass
Quietly planning a 30s pastiche
Hit by a bus we are free.

He (Wrote all the boringest songs)
is de-ad (All of the boringest so-ongs)
Oh! (He gave us everything we didn't want)
He's been squashed flat by a 42 bus
Here come conspiracies. Bye, bye

Ringo snores as..." etc etc...

this is like my dark horse favorite

even tho it has many redeeming qualities, i guess i don't love "fool" and "all you need is love" is kind of a pain in the ass at this point. and "H/G" is dumb dumb dumb but it sounds fuckin great.

A+ Nick :)

I bet John and George were so glad they didn't have to do "Your Mother Should Know" live. It's a song I've always liked but when Paul starts doing the "da da da daaa da daaa da da daaa" you kinda want to peg him in the head with a bottle.

"Your Mother Should Know." I actually LIKE "Flying," with the descending parallel-6ths guitar riff, and Ringo's voice dominating the singalong part.

Why do you think that, Mark? Because of its status as "not a proper Beatles album"?

― Sickamous (Scik Mouthy), Friday, 25 September 2009 07:05 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Sorry, N, been out:

Um, no, and not even because of the 'fewest' songs, but more or less because I can't actually see anything here that is dudworthy.

Yeah, people are tired of "All you need" and some might decide that "HelloGoodbye" is the least good Beatles a-side.

Or mabe even because there's no Ringo track!

Definitely an underrated LP. My vote here is for "Fool on the Hill": mawkish lyrics and godawful flute (or is it a tin whistle?) solo. Almost though not quite rescued by the masterful "sees the sun going down" bit. BTW: is that loud swooshing sound that comes in towards the end (sorry, I don't have the CD handy to note the time) a synthesizer?

hella xposts-

Oh man that's twice on these threads Geir has called me out. It's like I must hate melody as well.

this does have like the worst cover

@Pancakes: "Flying" was my favorite track when I was a kid.

Btw the remaster did some unbelievable things for John's "Walrus" vocal sound!

"The Fool on the Hill" is very tiresome, yes.

Blue Jay Way for being unbearable.

Love this album - Beatles at their trippiest. Even the weaker tracks have enough sonic fucked-upness or instrumental ingenuity to keep me enthralled...except "Your Mother Should Know." I have a higher-than-most tolerance for Paul's twee music-hall ditties, but agree with Nick that "Mother" is the most uninteresting of that lot.

xxxxxxpost - Scott, I believe that's just sped-up backwards tapes, if we're referring to the same whoosh. (I don't have the CD handy either.) George Harrison bought his Moog in '68.

"Blue Jay Way", utterly shit

Oh no, I failed to notice "All You Need Is Love"! One of the worst songs ever written!!!!

i like all you need is love-- have always thought it's an archetypical lennon kind of song. the chorus refrain immediately followed by the downward falling horn lick seems to sum up a lot of what I like about his songwriting. voted "hello goodbye" which is maybe the *dumbest* beatles single

:(

but no offense if you like it! i mean, i'm usually a fool for mccartney's marshmellow pop tracks. this one just crosses a line for me

"flying" is nice but expendable. i like most of these songs. as a kid i was sort of entranced by this album and the accompanying comic-book style booklet.

http://digilander.libero.it/jamespaul/mmt_booklet/magical_mystery_tour_booklet_page_19_bottom.jpg

I mean did they even plug in Paul's bass during that radio broadcast????

Wasn't he playing piano?

Voted Fool on the Hill.

Blue Jay Way and Flying are my two favourites.

I always get mixed up what's on this and what's Yellow Submarine.

Has anyone else watched the film lately? It has dull moments — and the visuals detract from lots of the music — but some of it is kind of extraordinary

At least the last ten minutes. The creepy restaurant section, the Bonzo Dog/stripper section, the bad Busby Berkely bit.

The part where the old man and Ringo's aunt are on the beach is oddly very touching mainly because of that orchestrated version of "All My Loving", which I really wish was on this album tbh.

Love "Flying" - wish there was a 12-minute take of it or something

Those voting for "Blue Jay Way" must be warned: I will hunt you down.

To me, this is their most solid album (even though it was only a proper LP in the USA). But the worst has got to be one of Paul's snoozers: "Fool On The Hill" or "Your Mother May Know".

yeah, i voted for "Fool" even though I like it. I like it the least, I guess. This is a great album!

It's a tossup between Blue Jay Way and Flying for me. I like Flying, but it is also kind of pointless, but I'm voting for Blue Jay Way because it is a bit too droney for my taste.

I used to date a girl a long time ago who was a big Counting Crows fan and she dragged me to one of their concerts. The best part of the show came right before the band took the stage. They blasted the song Magical Mystery Tour over the PA at full rock concert volume. It's the only time I've heard a Beatles song at the volume level and it was aweseome! It went from being a song that was just ok for me to being a favorite.

That's kinda ridic! "I have an idea, why don't we will get the crowd excited by playing a song from a band that is 50zillion times more interesting than we are!!!"

I don't understand the hate for Your Mother Should Know. :(

yeah that is prob. my fave of Paul's old timey songs

I like it alot too but the scat-solo really irks me.

it took me a long time to appreciate "your mother should know" but now it's one of my favorites. i agree that this album has a creepy weird feeling to it. i've always thought of it as the sound of the Summer of Love (almost retched typing that) coming to an end. most of these songs were recorded in august and september of 1967, correct? you can feel the days getting a little shorter, the sunsets are a little chillier. the whole album has this twilit feel and mccartney in particular seems to be saying "yeah this summer was great wasn't it? let's try to stretch it a little longer".

"your mother should know" starts out slight but by the first appearance of that beautiful piano break more elements have been added to the mix. by the time he's singing the "da da da"s at the end we've got the "whiter shade of pale"-ish organ line (remember it was a big hit earlier that summer) running behind it and it's become quite poignant.

'YMSK' is okay i guess. the melody is interesting but i feel like the song doesn't go where it ought to. there IS something creepy and weird about this album, and YMSK has that in the "let's all get up and dance to a song that was a hit" imo.

A decent salvage job. They were running over and basically told Costello that he only had a several minutes to get on the stage, perform and exit, so he settled on something easy that the crowd would know and somewhat fit the spirit of the event. Introducing it as "a Northern folk song" was very amusing.

*had several

Didn’t recall that. Nicely done.

I do like Costello's version, and along with Bon Jovi's stumbling rendition of "Here Comes The Sun" on some awards show just after Harrison passed, it's another reminder to musicians who cover Beatles songs that, oh shit, they sometimes messed around with time signatures, didn't they?

It won't convince the haters, but that B7 in the chorus (the last "all you need") is one of the great Lennon/Beatles chord changes, which Costello's stripped down cover shows off.

He’s on pretty cheery self-deprecating form here. The official Live Aid people just put a whole bunch of this backstage-celebs stuff on their YouTube. Funny to see he’s got the words (or something) written on his hand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpxC4DzeOXg

I'll add that in addition to being a time capsule, it's musically pleasing on basic level. Even Lennon/McCartney's weakest material is typically very tuneful with at least one memorable hook, and it's easy to see why AYNIL was another #1 hit and why 20 years later it can be familiar to so many people. It's not inaccurate to think of it as a folk song in that way. It may be a dated sentiment rather than the profound philosophy some hoped it to be, but I don't think nursery rhymes have endured for any grand insight they have into life.