Official ILX Artist Tracks Poll : The Beatles (Next up: Prince)

Blake: Are they all here?
Williamson: All but one.
Blake: Well, I'm going anyway.

http://img.poemhunter.com/lyrics/singers/07/2907_b_2340.jpg

Following the success of the Blur, Pavement, MC Tunes and Manics

and Petshop Boys

So again identical set-up to the last two and I'm also copying the header rules verbatim (cheers):

Right, here we break in for an importatn message:

Some helpful words, hopefully. It's a large and wide ranging set of tracks, most of them well known to your granny from back in her bongo playing days. Some (if not all) of you will be tired to the point of overfamiliarity with a large number of their 'nailed into fundamental history' tracks, so this is about nominating your favourite songs at this moment in time. You want to be obscure? Go do it. You want to praise the canon? Be my guest.

There are very few remixes in here. (don't larf, read on...) The only ones I can think of regard two songs: Love Me Do (exists in two different recordings), and Revolution (three, sort of..). With LMD, safe to say, it's a vote for either version. Revolution exists in "single b-side" (noisy), Album track "Revolution 1" and 'collage' Revolution 9. For this one, even though 9 has been proved to be the 'second part' of a long recording of 1, we shall deal with it as a separate track.

In summary: Votes are for the 'song', and specific versions will be given an addendum where necessary, sort of like this:
60. I MUST BE IN LOVE (1965) [115 points, 6 votes, 1 Number1, Specific versions:2="Archaeology"

.. but it is not necessary to do this for voting.

Right, trackography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Beatles_songs has the 'recognised' ones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_The_Beatles_songs#To_Be_Added has 'christmas flexi' songs, and other tracks of 'dubious/debateable' provenance.

But, main rule: It has to have been recorded and released by The Beatles.
e.g.
"Carnival of Light" not eligible
"From a Window" not eligible, but "Bad to me" is
"Step inside love" is, as it is on "Anthology"
OK, nearing overkill now. You get the idea, I'm sure.

Choose your top twenty tracks and they'll score as follows:
1:40, 2:36, 3:33, 4:30, 5:28, 6:26, 7:25, 8:24, 9:23, 10:22, 11:21, 12:20, 13:19, 14:18, 15:17, 16:16, 17:15, 18:14, 19:13, 20:12.

Please send your ballot to: beatlespoll (at) hotmail.co.uk by midnight gmt July 11th (that's a week from Sunday).

In the meantime, use this thread for bigging up tracks you want people to vote for and asking any questions..

And remember: All you need is Aaaaaaarrgggghhhhh!!!

Who? I'm not sure this band is big enough to justify this type poll.

That's what Spotify is there for.
Admittedly, there's no Beatles on it, but hey.

Done instantly and no regrets. I'm as out-of-love with them as I ever get, but I'll stand by it.

Done.

Thank youse.

Am keeping on top of this, and have done mine too.

There are very few remixes in here. ..... The only ones I can think of regard two songs: Love Me Do (exists in two different recordings), and Revolution (three, sort of..).

Ah, you are right.

Handy non-table alphabetical list of songs:
http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/songs.htm

Actually, if you factor in the "Anthology" there are a great many 'different' versions.

And ooh, ooh, I have got an actual remix!

"Yellow Submarine", on the CD single of "Real Love", is an actual remix, adding in an excised intro and making the sound effects noisier.

voted

yeah me too - as idiosyncratic as it comes. Lots of goofy White Album cuts etc.

What I did find is that actually picking 20 Beatles tracks that I love above the others was kind of tough. I do really like the Beatles, but I've been listening to them for 20 years and so their catalogue now shifts between "like", "don't mind" and "not so keen" rather than "LOVE", "LIKE", "HATE".

don't forget that Her Majesty IS a pretty nice girl, guys.

I don't know if it's sarcasm but Her Majesty was actually in the first draft of my ballot. I did vote for 'Flying' made it all the way to my #2 actually.

Hey Her Majesty was on mine too, it could've been the early leader if things had been only slightly different.

Fuck... Why did I miss Flying?

cos it's rubbish

Yeah, well "Plenty of jam jars" was on mine, but it didn't make the cut.

no, I totally voted for Her Majesty! I put it on at 20 though because I am cheeky (poll-closer) and because there are a lot of songs that are just as awesome, but for longer.

Hell, my ballot is surely going to include a whole lot of Macca. I'll be happy if don't end up as the only one who placed I Will (THE perfect pop song about love, IMO) as his #1!

This is going to be difficult. I've got an initial list of 88 to start whittling down.

Damn, I've just thought of something from Love that I shoulda given a vote

Just voted, getting it down to 20 was hard, ordering that 20 was impossible.

Just voted before I change my mind.

V79 otm about "I Will"

What's the deal with Abbey Road side 2? Can I count Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight as one song?

I hate 'I Will'. McCartney at his worst (and I like a lot of his Beatles numbers).

Ballot sent. Not as hard as I'd imagined it would be. The 20 picks came rather easily.

lol @ there being fewer spaces to vote for Beatles songs than there were for Pavement songs

The Manics poll cut it to 20 instead of 22 and I guess Billy Dods and Mark G ran with it.

What was the reasoning behind 22 spaces anyway? Seemed like such an arbitrary number.

I think it was an arbitrary number.

so I can vote for the Christmas tracks, yeah? Really love that 1968 one.

sure.

I sort of kidded about "Plenty of Jam Jars" upthread, but when I heard "Please don't bring your banjo back" the first time, I was sure I'd heard it before as a genuine 'old' song. (I got it for 50p at a jumble sale)

More recently, it did strike me as John (as the Count) telling Paul to "play a little melody from the Good old days" without any warning whatsoever, and Paul having to come up with something completely off the cuff. "Oh my goodness! Yes. umm..." and he stalls a bit for time, then comes up with the goods...

Should have vote for it really.

threw together my ballot very instinctively without regard to how it represented their catalog and then looked at how it shook down:

4 from singles/Past Masters
4 from White Album
2 each from Sgt Pepper's, Let It Be and Help
1 each from Revolver, Please Please Me, A Hard Day's Night, Abbey Road, With The Beatles and Magical Mystery Tour
0 from Rubber Soul, Beatles For Sale, etc.

also very evenly divided between Lennon and McCartney (though I've always considered myself partial to Paul's songs) with 1 Harrison tune.

1 from With the Beatles
1 from Hard Day's Night
1 from Beatles for Sale
1 from Help!
4 from Rubber Soul
4 from Revolver
1 from Sgt. Pepper
2 from Magical Mystery Tour
1 from The White Album
0 from Let it Be
2 from Abbey Road
2 from Past Masters

voted! it was surprisingly easy to narrow it down to 20, and within those, pretty easy to do a top 5. the rest was just shuffling around and would probably change day to day

5 abbey road
4 white album
3 revolver
2 please please me
2 past masters
2 rubber soul
1 let it be
1 help

please please me 1
a hard day's night 1
help! 2
rubber soul 3
revolver 3
white album 4
past masters 3
let it be 1
abbey road 2

D'oh - I totally forgot to vote for She Said She Said and Baby, You're a Rich Man. Somebody vote for those!

Past Masters: 3
Rubber Soul: 3
Magical Mystery Tour: 2
Please Please Me: 1
Help!: 2
White Album: 2
Hard Day's Night: 2
Abbey Road: 1
Revolver: 3
Sgt Peppers: 1

feeling atm that part one of those mmt could've been a partic let it be track but i didn't want to dwell too long...

my #2 track vote charted almost entirely on the fact that i've lullaby-sung it to my daughter about three thousand times in the last month -- probably would've only scraped the top twenty a year ago.

What was the reasoning behind 22 spaces anyway? Seemed like such an arbitrary number.

As the inventor of the 22 spaces, I can confirm it was an arbitrary number (though, to be fair, twenty is just as arbitrary - there's no particular reason why the number of your favourite tunes should be divisible by the total of your fingers and thumbs). I just started making up a scoring system working down from 40 with decreasing gaps and decided I'd keep going till I got down to ten points, which happened to be after 22 tracks.

for some reason I'd assumed it was based on old world cup squads

D'oh - I totally forgot to vote for She Said She Said and Baby, You're a Rich Man. Somebody vote for those!

― Darin

I did.

Pretty much spread over the latter part of their career. Never a huge early Beatles fan, but I nearly voted for I've Just Seen A Face and She Loves You

Rubber Soul 1
Revolver 4
Sgt Peps 2
Magical 3
White 5
Abbey 3
Let It Be 1
Past Masters 1

Which pretty much represents how much I like each album anyway.

20's the perfect number for me. Neil Young might be the only guy where I'd feel a little hemmed in by 20. Even with the Beatles, once I got past 15, there was a slight change in how much the songs meant to me.

Help! -- 5
White Album -- 4
Rubber Soul -- 2
b-sides -- 2
Beatles '65 -- 1
Beatles for Sale -- 1
Let It Be -- 1
Magical Mystery Tour -- 1
Revolver -- 1
Yellow Submarine -- 1
Christmas EPs -- 1

As the inventor of the 22 spaces, I can confirm it was an arbitrary number (though, to be fair, twenty is just as arbitrary - there's no particular reason why the number of your favourite tunes should be divisible by the total of your fingers and thumbs). I just started making up a scoring system working down from 40 with decreasing gaps and decided I'd keep going till I got down to ten points, which happened to be after 22 tracks.

― There is power in an onion (Nasty, Brutish & Short),

Cool -- I def wasn't criticizing the method, just curious about the thinking behind it. I might bring it back for the Zep poll.

Right, have caught up with the 'ballots' I have received so far.

That's 20.

Ooh, I am tempted to say how things are going. But I shall resist.

I got caught up in The White Album as a teenager through...yes, Charles Manson and the made-for-TV movie Helter Skelter. (Which I rewatched for the first time in 35 years recently, and it was pretty bad.) The connection faded, the songs stayed.

Just to clarify, when I say "connection," I mean morbid fascination.

Hard Day's Night 4
Beatles for Sale 1
Help! 2
Rubber Soul 1
Revolver 2
Sgt Pepper 1
White Album 4
Abbey Road 1
Single only 4

I think Manson should write a 33 1/3 book on the White Album. Well, not really, though someone could probably compile one from random quotes. Which brings me to another Manson (Marilyn) and his 1999 PR nightmare with the Columbine shootings. How come no rightie/fundie nutbags blamed the Beatles' music for Tate-LaBianca? Or did they?

The Manson thing was all a cover-up perpetrated by a bunch of family members that had gotten into some bad drug deals and were inventing this acid-fried conspiracy in hopes that police would buy it. They had killed (or so they thought, he actually survived) a member of the Black Panthers during a botched deal, and decided that making it look like a HELTER SKELTER race war was the best way to get the heat off them. No doubt everyone was fried on drugs and paranoia so they probably believed it to some degree, but it seems that the mythos was more like a poorly conceived cover-up.

What Manson thing?

Charlie.

oh, that Manson thing

Where does it say the White Album's influence on Manson was a cover-up? cite source plz

Probably a bad source but I recently read "Manson in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of 'The Most Dangerous Man Alive'", where he details pretty much what went down.

I mean 'cover-up' as in, after they killed some people, they decided to use it to make it look like someone else did the murders. I previously thought they had gotten the ideas to kill first from the Beatles album, which doesn't seem to be the case, according to Manson's account.

Have now voted. My list doesn't look anything like I thought it would - lost of Beatles songs which I have liked and which I think are 'better' didn't make the cut in the end, and several which are very uncool and unlikely to get anyone else voting for them made it, just because I liked the sound of them over the last few days (perhaps because I haven't overplayed them before).

I haven't seen it but there's supposed to be a really funny movie streaming on Netflix about the conspiracy to cover up Paul's death.

"Paul McCartney Really is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison"

finally submitted mine after way too much thought.
my album breakdown (total points for each album are in brackets):

Revolver, 3, (95)
various singles, 3, (66)
Rubber Soul, 3, (63)
The White Album, 3, (52)
Beatles For Sale, 2, (45)
Magical Mystery Tour, 1, (33)
Let It Be, 1, (28)
Help!, 1, (23)
Abbey Road, 1, (19)
St Pepper's, 1, (15)
Yellow Submarine, 1, (13)

"Words of Love" would have easily been my #2 until i found out it was a cover!

Hi folks, not long to go before ballots close.

How many have you got?

And did you get mine?

Got: around 32

Yours, I dunno I'm away from the files and mail.

If I find it's not there, I will contact you.

submited my ballot a while ago. few interesting picks here, mostly the Anthology 2 version of "And Your Bird Can Sing":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjvcLO3QRko
(featuring way superior bassline) and "Boys" as the lone Ringo sung cover. Also, I hope nobody forgot about "We Can Work It Out" (my #2)?

hah! my #2 also!

Right, ballot is officially closed!

Will begin the results when either the PSB results thread is done, or in about a weeks time, whichever is the latter...

PSB is finished off now isn't it?

Ah so I see. I'd better got on with it, hadn't I?

Oops. Too busy following the PSBs results to remember to vote for the Beatles. Poll overload.

Yeah maybe we should give a slightly longer break between them - as in wait for the polling and the results are done for one before starting another (rather than starting the polling for one as the results come in for the other). Otherwise people will get sick of em.

RIght, have assimilated all the votes, so...

51 ballots received, that's pretty good...

can't wait!

^^^

really looking forward to this... had some excellent drunken conversations on this topic over the weekend

hah! my #2 also!

me three. it's a lock!

Hurry up with the reveal while there's still some mystery left!

hah! my #2 also!
me three. it's a lock!

i'm curious what our 3 #1s were now!

my #1 is a George song

Bah, missed the deadline :(

*throws brick*

Zip ~~~~~ POW!

And so this guy was riding in an airplane, and he lights up a cigarette...

kind of disappointed there were 19 more voters for this than the psb one. what happened to ilm?

Pavement had more voters than The Beatles, which seems totally strange.

Didn't vote for Beatles as all energies were focused on the 50s. Looking forward to these results however, will lurk gleefully.

Results time?

50s finishes tomorrow, The Beatles can wait a day

I was jamming the shit out of the White Album yesterday and it made me wish I could include 3 or 4 more cuts off that album.

this is going to be great. i wish i got a confirmation of receipt from the poll taker, i'm worried my vote won't be counted!

my #1 is a George song

just wanted to tell you so is mine!

Found it. Yes. (xpost)

praise from Caesar xp

Yeah I was panicking about Mark G not getting my vote too, I seem to remember gmail acting a bit weird at the time.

just wanted to tell you so is mine!

the hivemind at work

Thanks Mark.
I agree, Nate, Gmail s--ks