Elvis completely changed the paradigm of how rock music was made and how it was marketed. The Beatles completely changed the paradigm of what it meant to be a rock band and a pop band. They were also probably the first band to have three legitimate no-questions-asked rock geniuses: (in no particular order) Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and producer George Martin. They are the most important band ever. Their music cuts across all languages and cultures. It is nearly impossible to convey their significance—not just to music but to marketing, celebrity, and social change—and to describe their rock intelligence and execution. Some of their music is so profoundly brilliant that they almost single-handedly paved the way for all of us to collectively accept the notion that pop music can have a real impact in our life; that pop music can actually become a totem of our life and can be just as timeless as a movie or any other fine performing art.
To reiterate but with more emphasis, The Beatles are the most important band in the history of rock.
All in all, The Beatles tallied up twenty seven #1 singles on the U.S. charts. The scope of their #1 hits are varied—everything ranging from the gloriously simple “She Loves You” and the smile-inducing “Love Me Do” to the brute-force sadness of “Yesterday” and the textured and superb “Something”—and it would be very easy to pick from one of their chart-topping singles to use as a song for this site. But the song that, I think, best displays the genius of Lennon and McCartney (and Martin) is a song that was never released as an A-side single. And that song is “A Day In The Life.”
“A Day In The Life” is, simply put, one of the greatest pop songs ever written. Looking at this song at its most basic level it is an achievement of creative excellence if for no other reason than this song is pretty experimental with regards to its musical shifts and scales and, yet, it sounds so normal and natural. The orgasmic symphonic swirl that bridges Lennon’s composition to McCartney’s piano-based composition (as well as the final orgasmic crescendo towards the end of the track), this should register as avant-garde (or maybe even psychedelic?) to us and, instead, it sounds so natural and so pleasing. It sounds and feels like a typical guitar solo would. This is almost literally one of a hundred examples as to why The Beatles are so groundbreaking: John Lennon wanted to create a grand orchestral sound, George Martin understood the direction, the band recorded it, and we the audience inherently understood and digested it upon first listen. The Beatles, in many ways, were like Beethoven or Bach in that any boundaries that they pushed were collectively accepted as a normal function of creative growth.[1]
Looking at this song from a more complex level the discussion pretty much begins and ends with the lyrics and how they serve as a microcosm of who John Lennon and Paul McCartney were as songwriters, and as artists whose creativity would be forever linked to one another. “A Day In The Life” finds Lennon and McCartney at their collaborative zenith, with the song being bracketed by Lennon’s textured composition involving lyrics that revolve around his (albeit embellished) take on current events while McCartney’s composition is stripped down pop that revolve around youthful nostalgia. In many ways “A Day In The Life” is the defining microcosm of Lennon and McCartney as Beatles and as post-Beatle artists: Lennon, his lyrics and music having an important and present day quality about them; McCartney, a master architect of pop, taking something banal and turning it into something magnificent and catchy.
Musically, the symphonic crescendo in Lennon’s composition is perhaps the most indelible part of the entire song and, as I have said before, the exclamatory and thundering piano at the end of “A Day In The Life” is as brilliant and famous an ending for a song as the ending of Citizen Kane is to cinema and the ending of Anna Karenina is to literature. But on a much more personal and individual level I think it is McCartney’s composition that ultimately stays with the listener the longest. McCartney’s piece starts with a very simple piano tune and occasionally unfolds into momentary melodies of gorgeous, fluid beauty that exists in perfect communion with his playful (and almost wistful) lyrics.
When it comes to The Beatles it is nearly impossible to choose just one song that sums up the band’s significance and influence. (Hell, when I first started thinking about putting this site together about a year and a half ago I was sure that “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” was going to be the Pantheon entry. And then I thought for sure it would be “Yesterday.” I even thought about writing about the medley of eight songs that penultimately ends Abbey Road.) But one of the tie-breaking methods I use to include (or deny) songs on this list is the Foreign Exchange Student Theory.
And the Foreign Exchange Student Theory simply asks the question: “If you met (or lived with) a foreign exchange student who had no real knowledge or American or European rock or pop music of the last fifty years and they asked you to explain or talk about x, what would be the first thing that would come to your mind?” If a foreign exchange student asked me which song is the best Beatles song, I’d have to go with “A Day In The Life.” If they asked me which Beatles song they should listen to first, ditto.
And then after they listened to it I would tell them how The Beatles are the most important band of the last fifty years. And I would probably want to get them high while listening to Revolver. And I would want to show them all of the “Paul is dead” stuff, and make sure they knew that Ringo is no one’s favorite Beatle.
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[1] In fact, just look at the run of Beatles albums of Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s, Magical Mystery Tour and the white album: there’s quite a bit of diversity in that progression but the progression, for the most part, feels natural as it pertains to The Beatles (whereas with any other band it would probably sound forced or like it was trying too hard).
