Five songs that entirely changed the trajectory of The Beatles
The Beatles were an ever-evolving beast. Year on year, album on album, the Fab Four changed the face of music and then kept on switching it up again. From their earliest days as pioneers of a new mainstream sound bringing back American rock across the Atlantic, they then spent the entirety of the 1960s reshaping and remoulding what we know as rock and roll into various different packages.
That’s precisely why the question of ‘What’s your favourite Beatles album?’ remains a big one. You can spend hours debating that topic alone, as everyone seems to have a different answer and a different reason. Each signified a distinct moment not only in the band’s history but in the history of rock music as a whole, and their releases always seemed to be prophetic of how the genre might switch up in their wake.
Whether it was the early introduction of rock to mainstream radio plays, the inclusion of more mysterious folk lyricism or the not-so-subtle engagement with trippy counterculture, The Beatles always raced ahead of the pack. As songwriters, they’ve rightfully gone down as some of the best and most important. For a while, it seemed that wherever John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s pen went, the music world followed. But as they changed up their styles and sounds, they were continuously writing changes into their timeline and marking new chapters in their legacy.
With so much material, history, and stories to explore, getting involved with The Beatles can feel overwhelming at times. If you’ve only ever been a casual listener skimming the surface, the thought of diving any deeper can feel like a labyrinth of odd sonic shifts and style switches. But really, their evolution can be tracked in five stages. Holding your hand and taking you through, here is The Beatles’ story in five landmark songs.
Five songs that changed The Beatles:
5. ‘I Saw Her Standing There’
“1, 2, 3, 4,” McCartney yelled, and they were off. Opening up their debut album, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ wastes no time in racing headfirst into the world of rock and roll as the whole band kicks off. But instantly, this wasn’t standard rock. While the genre had been starting to creep onto UK radio, thanks to the likes of Elvis Presley, it was always clean-cut. It was more pop-leaning, with a recognisable format and a harmless, feel-good air. If it was a love song, it was the kind of love song that mothers would approve of, and stars still looked like the type of man your father would be happy with.
Then came The Beatles. Sure, their first singles like ‘Please, Please Me’ and ‘Love Me Do’ fit that description. But by the time their 1963 debut was out, this opener was more blues than pop. George Harrison’s guitar riff undeniably takes notes from Chuck Berry, while Ringo Starr’s drummer has always been inspired by jazz players or the bands behind the likes of Little Richard. When Lennon and McCartney first got together to start writing, they were always taking influence from the Black artists who were leading the way over in the States as blues and pop merged into a youthful new genre: rock and roll.
But unlike the sterilised and white-washed takes offered by Richards or the ‘square’ music being played by Bobby Vee or The Four Seasons, The Beatles kept the blues in and launched themselves into the world. Their earliest releases might now be brushed off as their least interesting, but their origin as songwriters has to be traced back to this and the impact Americans had on their pen.
4. ‘Norwegian Wood’
As such a fearsome songwriting team, it’s strange to think of Lennon and McCartney looking up to anyone at all. But they worshipped one person dubbed their “idol”: the great Bob Dylan. Just as The Beatles were revolutionising rock and pop, Dylan was doing the same for folk as he climbed to the top as the genre’s new wonder kid thanks to his political streak and his penchant for poetry.
Up until this point, The Beatles’ lyrics had been relatively straight-talking. They dealt with clear, understandable emotions like loving someone, missing someone, or wanting someone. However, after they met Dylan and were introduced to the counterculture, that changed. Written right after their first meeting with the folk star, which was also notably the first time they got high, ‘Norwegian Wood’ is a marked change into a more symbolic language. Lennon himself admitted to the influence, stating, ”[It was] me in my Dylan period.”
Dylan didn’t take too fondly to the track, stating, “What is this? It’s me, Bob,” and their friendship became rather strained after that. But this new openness to being more ambiguous or playing with nonsense to assign their own meanings opened a new door to a new era of The Beatles.
3. ‘A Day In The Life’
They do say weed is a gateway drug, and after The Beatles got high that first time, they fell into the deep end of hallucinogenics. In the LSD era of the mid-1960s, the band got into everything that came with the trippy lifestyle, such as meditation and spiritualism. Perfectly matching the hazy, spiralling weirdness of their regular acid trips, their music became equally as psychedelic.
Sure, on that topic, you could point to ‘I Am The Walrus’ or any number of nonsense songs across Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Magical Mystery Tour especially. More interestingly, however, this era suddenly seemed to give them incredible courage and confidence. After they’d cast off touring and abandoned any desire to make music they could play live, their drug-taking and new musical freedom seemed to inspire refreshed ambition.
Nowhere is that displayed better than in ‘A Day In The Life’, a hugely adventurous five-minute long opus of changing tempos, full orchestras, and vast, bold scale sounds. While still maintaining a distinct engagement with their lyrical style as they borrow bits and pieces from local news stories and characters they knew, the scope was suddenly blown up into something massive. The shackles of making radio hits were lost, and from this moment on, The Beatles’ experimentation wouldn’t be boxed in.
2. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’
When we talk about the evolution of The Beatles, it’s easy to just track Lennon and McCartney’s growth from rocking teenagers to musical machines. But there was always another force at work, developing in his own lane and slowly fighting to get some space. In the later periods of the band, George Harrison finally found his deserving spotlight.
On the White Album, a record famous for its vast and messy tracklisting as the group refused to come together and compromise, this Harrison-led track is the stand out. There are some great pieces on there, but this epic feels like the one that opened the door, leading them into what came next, which was a period of real musical maturity. As he collaborated with Eric Clapton, Harrison seemed to stick to travelling down the rock path but climb up and up to lofty new heights.
From the instrumentation, the wailing breakdown and the tenderly put lyrics, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weep’ has become the blueprint of a great rock song. Similar to ‘Something’, or his solo works like ‘My Sweet Lord’ or ‘Isn’t It A Pity’, Harrison appeared as a teacher in how to make a stand-out, anthemic, classic rock song in a timeless fashion at the end of the decade. As the rest of the band went crazy with experimentation, the quiet Beatle was grounding. He always was their secret weapon.
1. The Abbey Road Medley
On the final album the band ever recorded together, although Let It Be was actually released later, they dedicated the last half to one giant medley – something John Lennon hated with a passion. As Paul McCartney let his theatrical, experimental side run wild, his old friend deemed it “[music] for the grannies to dig”.
That’s exactly why the extended piece is an important one in the journey, though, as it really was the end of the line. By the time they came around to making Abbey Road, the creative, personal and professional relationships in the group had totally collapsed. After making the album, they all near enough sprinted to sign the break-up papers, all desperate to move on to other things. The medley provides a perfect clue for the music of Wings or records like RAM that McCartney would go on to make. Harrison’s ‘Here Comes The Sun’ was another anthemic cut that leads perfectly to his solo effort on All Things Must Pass. Lennon’s edgy attitude and annoyance towards the silliness of the medley is an insight into the political edge he’d start to take. And, as always, Starr was just happy to be there.
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make,” the band rang out. As the music gave way and the lights went out on the biggest band in the world, it was a fittingly dramatic end to a historic act.
