The Beatles’ favourite Beatles songs: A playlist
In 1957, John Lennon met a 15-year-old Paul McCartney at St Peter’s Church Hall fete in Woolton, Liverpool. The pair got on like a house on fire, bonding over their shared love for rhythm and blues. After finding chemistry in friendship and musicianship, McCartney was invited to join Lennon’s precursor to The Beatles, The Quarrymen.
In Barry Miles’ 1997 biography Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, McCartney was quoted remembering how he used to spend hours on end in Lennon’s bedroom, at his aunt Mimi Smith’s house, listening to old-school rock ‘n’ roll records from the likes of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis. They played and sang along to the tracks, eventually finding the confidence to write a handful of songs themselves. Little did they know then, but the words they laid down in those early jams would help guide them to worldwide fame in the early 1960s.
The settled Beatles lineup saw George Harrison join as lead guitarist and Ringo Starr on drums after Pete Best’s exit. The early material that would conquer the US charts heading towards the mid-’60s consisted mainly of r&b covers and the lovelorn writing exploits of the Lenon-McCartney partnership.
This partnership blossomed through the decade as the covers were ousted, and Harrison began to spread his songwriting wings, albeit in a particularly confined space. After dabbling with LSD and the spiritual teachings of the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles became synonymous with hippie culture. Their songwriting soon began to welcome more complex themes and lyrical structures.
Whether you’re more partial to the band’s early hits about holding hands and squeezing an extra day into the week or their latter meditations on strawberry fields and walruses, we can all agree The Beatles put out a pretty good spread. Today, we’re creating a playlist of the Fab Four’s favourite songs from their varied and unbeatable oeuvre. Hear the full playlist at the bottom of the article.
The Beatles pick their favourite Beatles songs:
John Lennon’s favourite Beatles songs
In John Lennon’s legendary interview with Rolling Stone in 1970, the magazine’s founder Jann Wenner managed to wheedle out some of Lennon’s personal Beatles-catalogue highlights.” I always liked ‘[I Am The] Walrus’, ‘Strawberry Fields’, ‘Help’, ‘In My Life’,” Lennon told Wenner, who interjected, “Why ‘Help!’?”
“Because I meant it, it’s real,” Lennon replied. “The lyric is as good now as it was then, it’s no different, you know. It makes me feel secure to know that I was that sensible or whatever—well, not sensible, but aware of myself. That’s with no acid, no nothing… well, pot or whatever. It was just me singing ‘help’, and I meant it, you know. I don’t like the recording that much, the song I like. We did it too fast to try and be commercial.”
When asked why he liked the 1967 classic, ‘Strawberry Fileds Forever’, Lennon replied, “Because it’s real, yeah. It’s like talking, you know, ‘I sometimes think no, but then again, I mean’, you know, like that. It’s like that Elton John one where he’s talking to himself sort of singing which I thought was nice.”
After discussing ‘Girl’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ other contenders for the top spot, Lennon singled out ‘Run For Your Life’ as one of his least favourites because it’s “phoney”.
The song that Lennon appeared proudest of was ‘Across the Universe’, which appeared in 1970’s Let It Be and came from the tip of his own pen. “It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve written,” he asserted. “In fact, it could be the best, I don’t know. It’s good poetry or whatever you call it. Without tunes it will stand.”
- ‘Help’
- ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
- ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’
- ‘I Am The Walrus’
- ‘Girl’
- ‘Across The Universe’
- ‘In My Life’
Paul McCartney’s favourite Beatles songs
Over the years, Macca has never shied from picking out his favourite Beatles numbers. As seen on the list below, his favourites span the band’s decade together, from ‘From Me To You’ to ‘Let It Be’. From Lennon’s arsenal, McCartney is particularly fond of ‘Across the Universe’ and ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, but ‘Julia’ comes out on top.
When Louis Theroux once asked McCartney for his favourite Lennon-penned Beatles song, he replied: “‘Julia’…is about the mum he couldn’t live with. So I loved the poignancy of that because I’d been with him round to Julia’s house to visit her. And I knew how deeply he loved her. So ‘Julia’ I would go with.”
As far as Harrison penned tracks, McCartney’s affections are angled towards the so-called quiet Beatle’s brooding contribution to Abbey Road, ‘Something’. “I like George’s song ‘Something,'” Paul said of the song in 1969. “For me, I think it’s the best he’s written.”
“I think that’s about the best track on the album, actually,” Lennon added at around the same time.
- ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’
- ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
- ‘Hey Jude’
- ‘Blackbird’
- ‘Eleanor Rigby’
- ‘Across the Universe’
- ‘Julia’
- ‘From Me To You’
- ‘This Boy’
- ‘Here There and Everywhere’
- ‘Yesterday’
- ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’
- ‘Rain’
- ‘Fixing a Hole’
- ‘A Day in the Life’
- ‘Penny Lane’
- ‘The Inner Light’
- ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’
- ‘Something’
- ‘Let It Be’
George Harrison’s favourite Beatles songs
Where McCartney has freely discussed his tastes in the Beatles catalogue over the years since the Beatles split in 1970, Harrison was markedly less eager to reflect on his time with The Beatles. However, he did single out 1965’s Rubber Soul as his favourite album and divulged a scattering of singular tracks on other occasions over the years.
“Rubber Soul was my favourite album,” Harrison said in an interview in the 1990s. “Even at that time. I think that it was the best one we made; we certainly knew we were making a good album. We did spend a bit more time on it and tried new things. But the most important thing about it was that we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before. Also, we were being more influenced by other people’s music and everything was blossoming at that time; including us, because we were still growing.”
In a rare interview with Lennon in 1974, Harrison singled out ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ as a particular Rubber Soul highlight. He told his former bandmate that he “felt where it was coming from”. Harrison mentioned it among a list of tracks “he really enjoyed”, which also included ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. He added that he preferred the “inventive” songs, like ‘Eleanor Rigby’, as opposed to the pop hits that garnered their initial fame.
- ‘Every Little Thing’
- ‘This Boy’
- ‘She Came In Through the Bathroom Window’
- ‘Because’
- ‘Golden Slumbers’
- ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird has Flown)’
- ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’
- ‘In My Life’
- ‘Eleanor Rigby’
- ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
Ringo Starr’s favourite Beatles song
As far as songwriting went, The Beatles’ trusty drummer, Ringo Starr, was relatively quiet. He had sole writing credits for just two of the band’s songs, ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ and the Abbey Road cut, ‘Octopus’s Garden’.
Despite his limited songwriting contributions, Starr offered his voice to a healthy supply of popular tracks, and despite any rumours triggered by Jasper Carrott, he was a fine drummer. Starr is proud of his work on ‘Rain’ above all other Beatles songs, as he revealed in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now.
“I feel as though that was someone else playing,” Starr said of the brilliant ‘Paperback Writer’ B-side. “I was possessed. I was into the snare and hi-hat. I think it was the first time I used this trick of starting a break by hitting the hi-hat first instead of going directly to a drum off the hi-hat. I think it’s the best out of all the records I’ve ever made.”
Below, we have made a playlist of the songs that The Beatles’ have picked out as favourites over the years. With a nice selection spanning early, later, obscure and salient, it makes for the perfect introductory playlist. So if you ever find someone who hasn’t heard of The Beatles, you know where to send them.
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