Beatles

So the other day I was humming a Beatles tune (Which one? I don't know!) and I decided to listen to it on YouTube, which led to a marathon session of listening to Beatles albums.

How is it that music that is almost 50 years old is still so incredibly fresh and relevant? 

Rubber Soul and Revolver were released in 1965 and 1966!

Also, they are still better than most of the music on the radio today.  I was in a mall the other day and some singer was singing "shine like a diamond" repeatedly to the point where I wanted to pull an Elvis Presley and shoot the radio.

I discovered a few things along the way.  

As I was listening to an album I knew like the back of my hand (do the rest of you have that thing where you can hear the next song in your head before it actually starts?) and I heard the "wrong" song.

Turns out, albums released in the US and the UK have different lineups and different songs, which I never knew. 

I also discovered something about Norwegian Wood a few years ago, which still staggers me.  First of all, apparently, it was a fad in England at the time to panel a room with wood, hence the reference to Norwegian wood. All my life, I swear to you, I thought they were discussing fire wood! I thought maybe Norwegian wood smelled better! (Don't judge me, I was 8!)

More importantly, at the end, after the girl leaves without sleeping with him, he says, "so I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian wood," which, again, all my life, I thought he was lighting a fire in the fireplace, he meant that he set the house on fire!  Am I the only one that didn't know this?

However, the thing that staggered me the most was listening to Run for Your Life.

Okay, I have been listening to this song all my life and NOW I realize how incredibly misogynistic it is?

It's incredible how much life has changed in 50 years. I know I sang this utterly unthinkingly in 1965. I think we thought this was "romantic" in 1965. Unbelievable but true.

I looked it up and apparently this is Lennon's homage, although it irks me to call it that, to Elvis Presley's song, Baby, Let's Play House, that contains the line, "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man."

To his everlasting credit, according to Wikipedia, Lennon averred that this song was his "least favourite Beatles song" in a 1973 interview and later said it was the song he most regretted writing.

Let's give John credit for maturing and evolving, just like the rest of us.

Okay, back to Youtube....