The current issue of Rolling Stone has their listing of the 100 best Beatle songs. Anybody of my generation should find that interesting, since the Beatles were such an important part of all our childhoods! Objectively, they were also one of the two-or-three greatest rock bands, whose music has not faded in quality at all in the 40 years since they broke up.

This is the top 10 songs as per Rolling Stone:
1 A Day in the Life
2 I Want To Hold Your Hand
3 Strawberry Fields Forever
4 Yesterday
5 In My Life
6 Something
7 Hey Jude
8 Let It Be
9 Come Together
10 While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Interestingly, 3 of the songs are joint Lennon-McCartney compositions (#1, 2, 5), while 2 are exclusively John Lennon songs (#3, 9), 3 are exclusively Paul McCartney (#4, 7, 8) and 2 are George Harrison songs (#6, 10).

Never one to be daunted by a list, I have made my own list of my 10 favorite Beatle songs. Surprisingly, it is not too different from the Rolling Stone list. Keep in mind that if I made this list next week, it would likely change somewhat.

1 Strawberry Fields Forever
2 I Want To Hold Your Hand
3 Help!
4 A Day in the Life
5 All You Need is Love
6 Hey Jude
7 Revolution
8 Got To Get You into My Life
9 She Loves You
10 I Feel Fine

This list was a lot more difficult to compile than I imagined (no pun intended ☺). The #10 position was the hardest, since it required my picking one Beatle song out of their entire catalog which deserved to be on the top 10. I considered such songs as “Rain,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” “Let It Be,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and the song I selected for my original posting “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” But the more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that “I Feel Fine” belonged on the list.

In my opinion, John Lennon was a slightly better songwriter as a Beatle than Paul McCartney, but when they went their separate ways, Paul was better as a solo artist than John, in spite of the fact that McCartney is a terrible lyricist. Still only Elton John (in my opinion) can match his ability to write a melody that is both intricate and catchy. And yes, Paul has the unfortunate tendency to release some stuff whose fate should be a forgotten outtake (another trait he shares with Sir Elton). You think somebody in the studio would have the guts to say, “Uh, Macca, what are you thinking?”

Send all complaints to Rolling Stone, not to me! :)