We don't (maybe can't) choose our emotions and what we like or dislike. Hence me liking the Beatles just feels lucky.
Your point reminds me of how I feel about most of Mozart's work.
Emotionally I like very little of it - but it's fascinating to explore and I recognise that it's absolutely brilliant.
Memorable? - yes - "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" will never leave my brain. Forgetting it is just not an option. Why
And Mozart's variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are truly stunning - well worth listening to - but I still don't like it.
The basic tune feels like an indestructible brain parasite.

 

Couldn't agree more. I do believe it is possible to put aside personal taste and analyse a piece of music. For me this includes almost every opera ever composed (and I've sat through quite a few - nasty breakup with that woman, but that's another story) and Frank Zappa. i can see that opera is simply operating on a level that my brain doesn't understand, while Zappa infuriates me with musical brilliance combined with "ram it up your poop chute" to make me reach for the off switch. Neither Puccini, Verde nor Zappa are at fault. The fault is mine. I haven't the inclination to learn the language of opera and I take music too seriously to enjoy Zappa. So, I'm missing out.
As an aside: I recently read a worldwide study of musicologists who voted for the "best song of all time" and Silent Night was considered a "perfect song" by a large majority. I was surprised until I parsed it through my musical receptacators and found myself in agreement.
So sometimes songs are right in front of us and we are unaware of their greatness.

 

Yes Silent Night would be a tough one to disagree with - and actually I like it.
Other contenders (on my personal list) in that race to be infuriatingly simply perfect (and unforgetabble)
would be Greensleeves, Amazing Grace, and too many hymns to list.
I love the fact that Greensleeves is many many centuries old and always sounds fresh. Analysing why is mega baffling.

 

Amazing Grace is another perfect piece of music. My problem with Greensleeves is that in Australia, the distorted sound of that tune heralded the arrival of the Mr Whippy Ice Cream van every summer of my childhood and I hated Mr Whippy ice cream. It had it's upside I suppose. My sister loved it and as it melted almost instantly with sugar dripping down her arm, she was attacked by wasps and bees. So yeah, not a bad tune after all.

 

Keep in mind, advertisements with catchy hooks that people slap themselves for humming amount to a similar principle.

 

I see you captured your childhood Mr Whippy escapades on YouTube
and there's an entire Ozzie Mr Whippy cult on YouTube too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcCn_UJ_MXE

30 seconds of torture for Lenny... Lick that Whippy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7pv4Qivn_c

Now help for Lenny to rehabilitate Greensleeves - the therapy and recovery session can start here...
I like the way this timeless tune shines through this solo piano version.
So grab yourself an Ice Cream cone and relax to this version.
Greensleeves solo piano

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSjfkwvOOAM

Thousands of versions available of course, including many lush orchestral versions...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWz-Hfw4fnk
With something like that orchestral version it's not just that the basic tune has such easy-going perfection; it's also how the orchestration sounds so inevitable - like the specific harmonies just demanded to be there.
I think that kind of arrangement skill was where George Martin made a huge contribution to the Beatles work.

 

Penny Lane was the first time I heard George Martin's skills with the soaring piccolo trumpet, woodwinds & brass...then the rest escalated from there where I listened a lot to what was going on behind the scenes...

 

Don't get me wrong, I respect their work.

I just don't find it as earth shattering or as definitive as true fans. I am cool with people liking them and cool with whatever else. Variety is the spice of life.

I could probably rattle off 10-12 of their songs a few more were added to list as I read this thread as associative memory is prodded by people having written about a song or mentioned it.

I just thought that it was important to state than not everyone is still feeling Beatlemania or was a candidate back then. Though I was not even imagined at the time as in the mid 60s and early 70s my father's bollocks were still bald. Sometimes people worship at the altar of seminal and period defining bands because they think it's necessary as to not so would be heretical.

As a heretic, I just wanted to raise my hand.

That is all.

 

That might be one of the funniest and most ironic statements in this thread because it is true for some people. I am too old to worship anything other than life itself.

 

Your sins and confessional are duly noted.
You're in luck - Lenny's inquisition team was (allegedly) disbanded sometime in the 14th Century.

Was the guy in this crowd your great-great-gr... grandfather?
Couldn't see if his balls were bald or not?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ

 

Monty Python resurrected it. "It's not a Spanish Inquisition:"...

Speaking of which back to The Beatles, Eric Idle collaborated with George Harrison on a few projects and Harrison appears in a cameo appearance as Mr. Papadopoulos, "owner of the Mount" in 'Life of Brian' where your clip is from.

 

They were lucky to come along at a time when guitar-based music was still new and nobody else had got there first.

 

Not Beatles, but Awesome cover nonetheless..

 

Last edited: Oct 15, 2021

King's Singers - Nice. Love hearing what 'voice only' can deliver.
Weird personal bias... I really like hearing voices used as instruments without lyrics.

Bobby McFerrin - what a skill set
makes me want to complain that he's not singing 3-part harmony - he's holding out on us.

Beach boys cover - link didn't work for me. Found it here though. Awesome song.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne8B_9opE9g

 

I am the Walrus
George Martin working with the eggcentric Jim Carrey (wonderful)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Gz5zbGONk

 

Let It Be is a cover album by the Slovenian avant-garde group Laibach.
It was released in 1988 and is a cover of the Beatles' 1970 album Let It Be.

"Get Back" – 4:25
"Two of Us" – 4:04
"Dig a Pony" – 4:40
"I Me Mine" (George Harrison) – 4:41
"Across the Universe" – 4:15
"Dig It" (Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Richard Starkey) – 1:32
"I've Got a Feeling" – 4:34
"The Long and Winding Road" – 1:49
"One After 909" – 3:20
"For You Blue" (Harrison, Hardin) – 5:10
"Maggie Mae" ("Auf der Lüneburger Heide" & "Was gleicht wohl auf Erden") (composed by Ludwig Rahlfs with lyrics based on a poem by Hermann Löns) – 3:41

Laibach - Across the Universe (Official video), 1989

Laibach - Two of Us

 

Heck I didn't knew "Dig a Pony" was the Beatles.. lol

Listened this version for years,
but never thought it could be anything else than Torsos

 

Hey Bulldog
Alice Cooper and Steve Vai - Butchering the Beatles

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xDI_bKC_vs

Beatles original here www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vbJQ-MrKo

 

The lawsuits. Also, things got really dark when Bob Dylan introduced them to tea.

 

Tomorrow Never Knows
More from Butchering the Beatles (Billy Idol, Steve Stevens)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PElMk-dJKn0