266. The Beatles, "Help!"

 



This video was going around music Twitter last week.  It concerns Ringo Starr and is worth watching:


The basic idea is that Ringo gets slagged off a lot for not being a very good drummer, but he was in fact a very good, very inventive drummer.  I don't think I know enough about drums to be able to speak definitely on that, but after seeing this video and then listening to this album - the Beatles' fifth studio album - I definitely noticed the drum parts a lot more and yes, they are much more inventive and creative than I had realized.

Seven of the songs on this album (well, the British version of this album) were songs on the soundtrack of the movie of the same name, which I have never seen and did not want to watch just for this project. You probably know most of the songs on this album because, like most Beatles songs, they are just part of the cultural lexicon.  I mean, the title track is so woven into general consciousness that a camp my kid went to when she was like 6 used it in their end-of-camp show.  My kid's first exposure to the Beatles; she liked the song.  

But listening back to it now, I was struck by how many of the songs are about failing or failed relationships.  "The Night Before" is about a romantic entanglement gone wrong.  "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," a lovely song, is about suppressing your feelings so you don't get hurt.  It's dark!  "You're Going to Lose That Girl" is exactly what it sounds like, the narrator threatening to come get your girl.  A lot of the songs are in that vein.  It's wild!

There are a couple of interesting covers.  "Act Naturally" was a big hit for Buck Owens (who also covered it; it was originally written by John Bright Russell), who recorded it in 1963, a few years before this album.  Here, Ringo gamely sings it; the Buck Owens version is superior.  And "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," a rock and roll rave-up originally recorded by Larry Williams.  John Lennon gives it an impassioned, raw read.

But the big gorilla on this record is "Yesterday," the most covered song of all time, maybe one of the best-known songs in the English language.  By now you know the story about how the melody came to Paul McCartney in a dream and he woke up and sang "scrambled eggs" to the melody in his head.  Just imagine the song that would have resulted if he'd kept the original lyric!  IHOP would still be using it in their ads.  Of course, it's ALSO about a failing relationship.  

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes.  All the Beatles albums do, because they're the Beatles.  

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