So in honor of Beatles Rock Band coming out today, I want to do a Beatles poll. I didn't want to do albums cause nobody listens to albums anymore and those who do are no longer here, except Philip. Also, why the American Number One hits? Cause I'm an American so there!

My choice is Let it Be, it's the best written song out there and a perfect end to The Beatles, The Long and Winding Road notwithstanding.

My vote would be for "Let It Be," plus, it was my class graduation song, which makes me feel obligated. Which is why I'm not going to do it.

My all time favorite beatles song, which is pure musical genius and a timeless work of art, is A Day In The Life.

From the list I would choose We Can Work It Out.

Great Poll, by the way.

I'm sorry, but if you picked a song besides 'Hey Jude' or, less offensively, 'Come Together', then you are going to Beatles Hell.



And what a horrible, horrible place that is...

Thankfully, I can dodge Phil's wrath by choosing Hey Jude, as it's actually my favorite. I even really liked the cover in Across the Universe, a film I didn't care for all too much.

I'm sorry Phil. I liked Hey Jude but I never liked the ending part where it's 2 or 3 minutes of "Na na na na, Hey Jude"

If Eleanor Rigby was applicable it would be choice. As it is, I went with Help!

True Beatles Hell is the Phil Spector-ized The Long and Winding Road...anyone who likes that version will be banned on sight. Alright, not really but you will earn my disdain.

I really have no favorite.

Bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Metallica, AC/DC etc..........its impossible to just pick "One" song.

You, sir, are correct.

I voted for "Help!" because, at the end of the day, it's got that brilliant vocal harmony. Plus? I like to hear people scream the title of the song right before they're struck down by cruel, cruel fate. And bloody vengeance.

No. That's not true.

Great song, though.

I voted for let it be,
But the best beatles track was "All you need is love" especially the version recorded for the BBC. Iv'e seen the video of it on you You tube. It is important to note that Mick Jagger appears to be on it.

Yeah A Day in the Life is probably one of my favorites as well. You should check out Jeff Beck's Instrumental cover of it. It's pretty breathtaking.

And if you actually don't think 'Let it Be' is a valid choice in terms of songwriting and what the song represents, then you have a place reserved in Pretentious Beatles Fans Hell, the only place more horrible than the one you named.

My guess (and I could be wrong about this) is that anyone who finds they're in a room with Evenflow8112 also finds they're standing waist-deep in the River Styx of "Pretentious Beatles Fans Hell". Not really, though. I just wanted to see what those words looked like when strung together in what I like to call a "sentence". Neat! Language is fun!

"Hey Jude", as classic as it is (ask any 8-year-old to name a Beatles song and that's the one they're likely going to spit back into your face before taking your wallet, locking you out of your car, and pinning six murders on you... that totally happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of a unicorn), suffers from The Beatles biggest problem: Paul McCartney. Unfortunately, he was also The Beatles most important member (this is arguable). It's a typical (not a bad thing) McCartney ballad: big, swelling, sincere, reasonably simple and at least 200% longer than it needs to be. If you like the melody (and, really, who doesn't?) you can listen as "Hey Jude" gets an upgrade by George Harrison in his far superior "Isn't It A Pity?". Harrison knew how to reign in the overindulgent impulses that McCartney so frequently gave into and, so, "Hey Jude" may be chosen by those wishing to stay on the good side of Beatles Hell's Dark Lord (his name is Mitch) or those who really love the song. But, by no means, is it the correct answer.

And "Come Together"? No..well, yeah. That's a great song. You should pick it. That or "Hey Jude". I hear if you don't pick one or the other Paul McCartney comes to your house and violates several of your houseplants.

I have a cactus he's welcome to seduce...

I don't like the Beatles, never have. The only time I enjoy a Beatles song is when it's performed by someone other than the Beatles.

Within the special features for the Sean Penn tard-sploitation flick "I Am Sam", they questioned several (dozen) special needs individuals about their favorite band. Hands down, it was the Beatles.

Connect your own dots.

-and I don't like Elvis either.

It is important to remember that the Beatles didn't just contribute their sound, their poppy tunes, or their studio innovations. They changed the rock paradigm entirely.

(Cue the Simpsons: "Aren't 'proactive' and 'paradigm' just buzz words that stupid people use to sound important?")

But seriously, folks. Before the Beatles, you didn't have rock bands. You had rock singers. Maybe the singer played an instrument sometimes, but what constituted a rock performance was a popular singer and a bunch of hired musicians backing him up. Think of Elvis on Ed Sullivan: Elvis is up front, singing into the Big Serious Mic, and there are a bunch of nobodies behind him who, if they're fortunate, find their way into the background of a shot for a few seconds. Sometimes the popular singers wrote their own songs, but it was hardly par for the course. Most of them had producers writing tunes for them, and all they had to do was make the recording and lip-sync to it on TV.

What the Beatles did, aside from the other things already mentioned, was fuse three concepts together: the musical ensemble, the rock 'n' roll singer, and the songwriting team. Previously, these were all disparate fields within the music business, but the Beatles managed to tie everything together as a self-contained music-making group.* That they were forward-thinking enough to conceive of this, not to mention talented enough to pull it off as well as they did, is pretty impressive.

(*At the time, the term "band" was still mostly used to describe the unpopular guys who backed up the popular guys. Eventually, using it to describe what the Beatles were doing found its way into popular currency.)

What then happened was that the Beatles started going on TV and there was a sudden boom of self-contained music groups springing up like mushrooms. Then those guys went on TV and the people who watched them went out and formed groups of their own. Then those groups went on TV, and their viewers formed yet another wave of groups, which formed yet another wave. And then the fans of that generation decided that the Beatles were overrated.

Yesterday. All my troubles seemed so far away. Learned this song in my choras class. The lyrics are fantastic.