The 10 most annoying moments in The Beatles’ discography
There is no shortage of brilliance spread out across every album by The Beatles. No band is perfect, but if there was ever a single act that followed every rule that a rock and roll group should do during their lifetime, the Fab Four really covered the basis of their greatest work throughout every release. There are a few outright dogs in their catalogue, though, and it has annoyed audiences to no end every time they have had to listen to a record in full.
Then again, The Beatles themselves didn’t have to necessarily enjoy everything that they wrote. John Lennon and Paul McCartney famously talked about various “work-job” songs that they would commit to tape every once in a while, so it’s not like they were above the idea of playing the same thing repeatedly if it were sold the right way.
It might be easy to forgive some of the more pedestrian songs of their early years, but it gets a lot more inexcusable when looking through their last years. Presumably, they could have made stone-cold classics every time they walked into the studio, so when they take the gamble and fumble it hard, it stings that much worse when their fans knew what they were capable of.
So whether it was because of label disputes, shoddy music choices, or one member insisting they had their way, this is just an assortment of problems on Beatles albums that history could have changed for the better. Maybe fixing these problems would throw off their legacy, but as it stands now, the tracks in question are the reason why even the Fab Four aren’t exempt from the skip button.
Annoying moments in The Beatles history:
10. ‘Mr Moonlight’ – Beatles For Sale
By the end of 1964, The Beatles seemed burnt the hell out on their fame. The influx of new fans had to be encouraging, but did that mean that they had to risk their sanity in the process of going from one tour date to the next? While Beatles for Sale is reflective of those sleepless nights on the road, they still held things together as a unit. That is, with the rare exception of ‘Mr Moonlight’.
It was bad enough to see the group reverting back to the same old mix of originals and covers, but hearing them take a swing at the Dr Feelgood original is a real head-scratcher. Despite Lennon singing it fairly well, there are more than a few moments that don’t sound like The Beatles should be anywhere near it, like the cheesy organ solo that’s ripped out of some British variety show.
The group usually had a knack for finding just the right tracks to cover on their albums, but this is them taking a chance and the rare time when they miss out on the gold. They can’t all be winners, but it figures that even one of the worst covers the group ever made is still some degree of good.
9. ‘Little Child’ – With the Beatles
The Beatles were always a breath of fresh air because of how much they stood out to their contemporaries. Even when other Liverpool hopefuls were coming in on their coattails, they still held together as the greatest frontline of musicians on either side of the Atlantic. You always knew when you were listening to a Beatles song, but ‘Little Child’ could easily have been pumped out by nearly anyone else.
Considering the massive turnover that they needed to make after their debut, With the Beatles could already be considered rough around the edges, but there doesn’t even seem to be any gimmick behind the tune. The lyrics are barely there, and although Lennon had the strongest voice out of the group in their early years, he sounds like he’s completely bored behind the microphone.
But boring doesn’t constitute annoying. No, that honour goes to whoever thought that the blaring harmonica solo was a good idea, which could have easily been a nice showcase for Harrison but ends with Lennon blowing his mouth harp as if he’s trying to abuse it. Lennon and McCartney had said that they occasionally tried to “write a swimming pool”, and given how weak the hook is, here’s hoping that swim was worth it.
8. ‘You Like Me Too Much’ – Help!
George Harrison didn’t deserve to get hung out to dry as much as he did during the group’s tenure. He was bound to be playing catch-up with Lennon and McCartney for the rest of his days, but it wasn’t until Abbey Road that even the duo confessed that the guitarist had come up with the best material. The quiet ones are normally hiding the best-kept secrets, but Harrison wasn’t exactly ready to run when they decided to work their way through ‘You Like Me Too Much’.
Harrison was already on his way to making more interesting stuff like ‘I Need You’, but everything about its production feels half-baked. Outside of the rest of The Beatles working their way through the chords, Harrison sounds incredibly unsure of himself on vocals, as if he’s constantly trying to put different inflexions in his voice to make sure every word comes out correctly.
Capping things has to be George Martin’s addition on the organ, which was probably used to add some spice to the tune but comes off as incredibly corny. Harrison certainly deserved a lot more airtime on Beatles records, but subjecting him to this track feels like the group were trying to make him run before he could walk.
7. ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ – The White Album
Any Beatles fan could count on Paul McCartney to come through with a catchy tune whenever he took the vocal. For all of the pent-up anger that existed at Lennon’s core, McCartney was always happy to just play the songs that came into his head that could make people smile. The White Album is where that changed slightly, but even if ‘Helter Skelter’ was too heavy for some people, ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ was too much in the opposite direction.
Possibly as an attempt to overcorrect back into sunny territory, Macca’s attempt at a slice-of-life story based around a Jamaican catchphrase is far too sugary to listen to more than three times. Regardless of the number of hours that it took to make it, the finished product doesn’t have much to show for it, especially when McCartney starts laughing during one verse, as if he can’t even buy the faux happiness that he’s presenting you with.
Don’t believe me? Just ask the rest of The Beatles, who all hated working on it and Lennon only contributing the timeless piano intro after he walked into the studio completely stoned. The only salvageable part of the song did rear its head, and it’s all the more tragic when you realise it was an accident.
6. The Interludes – Let It Be
Part of the appeal of Let It Be is being a fly on the wall in the studio as the Fab Four create their final album. It wasn’t meant to be their true swansong, but due to record executives being so hungry for product, we got Abbey Road kneecapped by the aborted Get Back sessions getting released after McCartney had already put out his solo debut. Still, having new Beatles songs is hardly ever a bad thing, but did we really need that many interludes in the mix?
While we know now, thanks to the Get Back documentary, that these sessions weren’t as troubling as most people thought, hearing fragments of ‘Dig It’ and their run-through of ‘Maggie Mae’ exist just to fill space on the track listing. It’s understandable why they would want to include them to simulate that voyeuristic energy, but why not save room and put ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ on instead?
That tune may have worked better as a single, but since ‘Get Back’ was also released on its own, why are we stuck with fragments of jams that amount to nothing but the group messing around a little bit in the studio? Because for all of the moments of brilliance peppered throughout Let It Be, it’s a bit awkward when you have to deal with random moments of nonsense in between.
5. ‘Run For Your Life’ – Rubber Soul
The entire premise of Rubber Soul was centred around The Beatles expanding beyond their usual teeny-bopper sound. During the making of Help!, they had certainly started to go outside of their comfort zone, but no one was prepared to hear them dip their toes into folk and hear the sounds of instruments like sitars before. So why, at the very end of the record, do they drop the ball with Lennon singing a track about romantic homicide?
While ‘Run For Your Life’ is far from the worst song The Beatles ever made, it is grossly misplaced at the album’s end. Even though most of the project had to do with the complexity of love like on ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Girl’, this feels like a bold step backwards, as if we’re suddenly reverting back to 1950s-style rock and roll reminiscent of Elvis Presley.
Lennon couldn’t even hide his shame for the tune, either, calling it one of his least favourite tracks he ever recorded. Despite it being laid down in those initial sessions and getting Rubber Soul, there’s a good chance that the woman Lennon is describing in ‘Girl’ would leave this sorry sap on his ass if he even thought about saying any of the things he implies here.
4. John Lennon’s bass on ‘The Long and Winding Road’
A project like Let It Be didn’t necessarily need to focus on having the tightest arrangements. This was about going back to bar band roots, so one could afford to be a little bit looser when it came time to play to give the impression of the Fab Four in their element in a sweaty club. That didn’t mean giving up on the structure, and ‘The Long and Winding Road’ ended up featuring one horrendous bass performance from Mr Lennon.
While bass was never Lennon’s first instrument, he doesn’t sound like he knows what he’s doing half the time that he’s playing this tune. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t that enamoured with what McCartney was doing, but there are plenty of wrong notes sprinkled throughout the track and parts where a bass note should predictably come in, but the listener is met with absolutely nothing.
What makes this far more annoying than a business decision is the fact that Lennon knew better, and would have probably been laying down this performance either out of boredom or under the assumption that it was just a scratch take. Phil Spector did end up smearing a bit too much of his signature touch across every piece of this album, but in the case of ‘The Long and Winding Road’, it might have been for the best just to get Lennon’s shoddy bass break smoothed over.
3. The US Releases confusion
The record industry looked a lot different when The Beatles first got started than how they are today. People were always thinking in terms of when the next single was going to come out, and thanks to the Fab Four turning the album into an art form, that meant that every piece complemented the other to create a whole. Before 1965, theys were still collections of singles, and the US market has been making Beatles completionists for years now.
Since The British versions of the records are considered the ones the group wanted to release, hearing their songs thrown together into Beatles IV or Yesterday and Today feels more than a little bit off. By the time they started taking a hatchet to masterpieces like Rubber Soul and Revolver, though, Sgt Peppers marked the first time that The Beatles’ material wouldn’t be juggled between two continents.
Then again, there are some instances where the US market actually improved on their output, including framing Magical Mystery Tour as a proper release and Meet the Beatles being a far superior listening experience than With the Beatles. Compared to the Fab Four’s usual MO of making quality music at every turn, this is the most egregious instance where the business side of their profession reared its head.
2. ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ – Help!
One pill that every Beatles fan has to swallow is the multitude of covers that they have done in their early years. Lennon and McCartney couldn’t just become world-class songwriters overnight, so a lot of their biggest hits came from them gradually speeding up the process and throwing in their favourite rock and roll songs. A lot of the time, it would be an absolute delight like on ‘Twist and Shout’, but relegating ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ to the end of Help! was far from the ending it deserved.
Then again, The Beatles weren’t taking themselves all that seriously in their second movie, anyway. They had just been introduced to marijuana, and even some of their more introspective tunes like ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ were undercut with lovable Ringo Starr singing ‘Act Naturally’. After everything starts to wind down with McCartney’s beautiful ‘Yesterday’, the strings gently fade away before the piercing sounds of Harrison’s electric guitar kick off ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’.
It’s not that the group don’t deliver a spirited performance (because they do), but having it directly afterwards undercuts any type of power that ‘Yesterday’ might have had. Maybe it was to assure the audience that they were still a rock and roll outfit, but this was the one instance when a simple track switch would have helped a great deal.
1. ‘Revolution 9’ – The White Album
Most Beatles are well-aware of the fact that The White Album is a bit of a mess. Any double record is known to be a bit rough around the edges, and while there is a lot of beauty to be found in The Beatles’ massive undertaking, it’s not without its faults, either. Because no matter how many diehard Beatles fans claim to be out there, odds are that more than 50% of them hit that skip button every time they start hearing ‘Number Nine!’.
While ‘Revolution 9’ is considered the nadir of their catalogue, that doesn’t mean that it’s short of interesting moments. Lennon had become interested in musique concrete with Yoko Ono, and hearing him explore his inner thoughts about revolution is an interesting headtrip for anyone to get lost in. Now, if they just put it out as a separate piece, it would have made for a far more interesting experience.
More than anything, the biggest crime of ‘Revolution 9’ is that it takes up so much real estate on The White Album. You could have put in two or three more tunes or the entirety of ‘Hey Jude’ on the record instead, but before Starr lulls us down to rest on ‘Good Night’, we have to sit through the musical equivalent of a horror movie.
