23 votes once again, but it was a one horse race this week. Given the support for George on this Forum, I'm very surprised that If I Needed Someone received only 3 points. Half of what the dreary Think For Yourself got. The results are:

1. In My Life     42          
2. Nowhere Man   18          
3. Drive My Car       17          

The remaining votes went to:

4. Norwegian Wood   13
5. The Word   11
6. Girl       10
=6.  I'm Looking Through You     10
8. You Won't See Me   8
9. Think For Yourself   6
10. Michelle   3
=10. If I Needed Someone   3
12. What Goes On   1
=12. Run For Your Life   1



Worst: What Goes On, with 10 pts.

Useless facts: 'Wait' was the only song to receive no votes in the 'Best' category.

'In My Life' is now the top scoring song in the game so far. It received a whopping 30.4% of the vote, knocking 'I Saw Her Standing There' into 2nd place.

This is the first time that the worst song has not been sung by John!

George has not yet had a song in the top 3.

The 45 top scoring songs (decided by percentage of vote recieved in each game) will go through to the second phase. Plus the 3 top scoring near misses.

Quoted from BlueMeanie

George has not yet had a song in the top 3.

Quoted from BlueMeanie

Given the support for George on this Forum, I'm very surprised that If I Needed Someone received only 3 points. Half of what the dreary Think For Yourself got.

*playfully smacks you around* Some of us don't find "Think For Yourself" dreary, you know! Taste is such an individual thing. Personally I have never liked "Norwegian Wood", but if this forum wants to put it in the top 4, that's fine with me. The beauty of the Beatles is that they can appeal to so many different tastes, so if you don't like one particular track, you can find another that melts your heart and curls your toes. (Although I am harboring a secret snicker of joy that "Michelle" came in as low as it did. I have no idea why, that song is fingernails on a blackboard to me.)

I really enjoy your summaries and fun facts. I must rush on to the next challenge. Cheers!

Quoted from harihead

I really enjoy your summaries and fun facts. I must rush on to the next challenge. Cheers!

Me too. Keep up the summaries BlueMeanie, this is fun. Hopefully more will vote as the song survivor continues on.  

Quoted from BlueMeanie

This is the first time that the worst song has not been sung by John!

Haha! Thats an improvement innit?  

I'm happy with the reults, especially how In My Life was voted in this poll.

Quoted from BlueMeanie

Useless facts: George has not yet had a song in the top 3.

This is a great Useless Fact! I had to think about it a while, so I could respond with some appropriately Useless Statistics.

George is doing fairly well, or at least not poorly, comparatively speaking. Out of the 83 songs we have considered in this contest, only five of them were by George. Since George was never terribly prolific, we can assume this is virtually his entire catalog through 1965. The only other song we ever see of his appears on Anthology 1: "You Know What to Do" from 1964.

How did John and Paul do with their earliest songs? As I'm reading Paul's biography at the moment, it was fairly easy to look up some of these early songs. Here's what Paul says:

Quoted from Paul

We used to try and persuade people that we had about a hundred songs before 'Love Me Do'. That was a slight exaggeration. It was probably more like 4 -- less than twenty anyway.

So, what were these early songs and how do they stack up? I'm not an Early Beatles scholar, but here's what I found. Please join in if you have more!


1. First song ever recorded, by themselves for themselves, never released:
In Spite Of All The Danger - by McCartney/Harrison

2. First song professionally recorded. Out of the Beatles catalog of half a dozen originals, Bert Kaempfert chose to record only this instrumental on June 22, 1961:
Cry For A Shadow - by Harrison/Lennon

Quoted from Simon Leng

The melody was all Harrison's, and as Pete best later recalled, it was created spontaneously: "Cry for a Shadow" was born during our first Hamburg tour, the result of trying to take the Mickey out of Rory storm. It was put together by George in a few minutes after Rory had called in on us during our rehearsal at the Kaiserkeller. He was telling us how much he liked the Shadows' song "Frightened City". "Can you play it?" he asked. George intentionally began to play around the Shadows' melody in a sort of counterpoint -- without Rory having the slightest suspicion he was being sent up. John joined in and I picked up the beat."

George now drops out of song-writing for 2.5 years.

3. Early McCartney songs, never released. No rating, and no way to judge their relative quality except that Paul himself chose never to release them:
- I Lost My Little Girl
- Just Fun
- Cayenne - instrumental (later appeared on Anthology 1)
- Years Roll Along

4. Early Lennon songs, never released.
- You'll Be Mine - parody (later appeared on Anthology 1)
- I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry (Over You) - later appeared on Live At The BBC

5. Early Lennon songs that were released later:
- I Call Your Name - back of "Bad to Me", released on Long Tall Sally EP. We'll rank it with Past Masters 1.
- Bad to Me - Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas took this to #1 in July '63
- One After 909 - Bounced from '63 session to resurface in '70 on LIB

6. Early McCartney songs that were released later:
- World Without Love - a #1 hit for Peter & Gordon, Paul suspected due to the Lennon-McCartney credit.
- I'll Follow the Sun - later released on "Beatles for Sale", where our forum ranked it a respectable #5
- Hold Me Tight - also held until on "Beatles for Sale", we ranked it #8
- When I'm 64 - held over until Sergeant Pepper. We'll rank it then!

7. Decca audition tape. Recorded, but songs never released by EMI:
Like Dreamers Do - McCartney
Love Of The Loved - McCartney
Hello Little Girl - Lennon

8. Pre-album performance by The Beatles at the Star-Club in Hamburg on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1962. Only two originals formed part of their show. They relied mostly on covers to get good audience response. For an analysis of this early live Beatles gig, see http://www.geocities.com/hammodotcom/beathoven/star3.htm
- Ask Me Why - Lennon - we ranked this #9
- I Saw Her Standing There - McCartney - Our forum ranked this #1 on PPM

9. Other early songs that ended up on the Please Please Me album, 22 November 1963, and our rankings:
There's A Place - Lennon - we ranked it #4
Love Me Do - old McCartney tune that got to #17 as a hit, we ranked it #5
Do You Want To Know A Secret - Lennon, we ranked it #7
Misery - Lennon/McCartney written for Helen Shapiro, who rejected it - we ranked it 0 (no votes)
P.S. I Love You - McCartney - we gave it 0 votes

10. Here's where I consider the Beatles "broke through" as composers:
* Please Please Me - Lennon - First #1 hit, we ranked it #2

This was the impetus for the PPM album, rush-released on 22 March 1963 in the UK, and the start of Beatles' success. This is my dividing line between "early" Beatles songs. There are 25 or so (depending on how you count), which is in Paul's ballpark.


--> By the way, I'm attributing authorship of Lennon/McCartney songs based on this page:
http://www.myrsten.nu/worldnet/beatlesongs.htm


The Useless Statistics part:

So, how does "early" George stack up?
Unreleased: 2 songs, 1 co-authored with McCartney and 1 on June 3, 1964 - unranked
Released, unranked: 1 song, 1961 co-authored with Lennon
Released song - Don't Bother Me - we ranked it #6


Help me fill in my gaps! Here's what I have so far, based on the above:

Early Lennon:

Unreleased: 3
Released, unranked by us: 2
Released, our average rank: 4 songs, average rank #5.5


Early McCartney:

Unreleased: 6
Released, unranked by us: 2
Released, our average rank: 5 songs, average rank #5.8

Not included above: 1 Lennon/McCartney co-authored song, our rank: 0
(I'm not sure how to average this in without dragging the solo average down)


Later statistics:

By the time we get to Rubber Soul (which prompted the opening quotation, aren't you sorry you said anything, BM?), Lennon and McCartney have now written at least 70 songs that I know about.
George didn't get active again until Help! (2 songs in August 1965 and 2 in December 1965).

At this point, our Top 3 list compares 83 songs, and looks like this:

Lennon: authored 35% of all songs, has 56% of the top 3 vote
McCartney: authored 24% of all songs, has 33% of the top 3 vote
Covers: comprise 24% of all songs, have 11% of the top 3 vote
Lennon/McCartney co-authorship: 11% of all songs, have 0% of the top 3 vote
Harrison: authored 6% of all songs, has 0% of the top 3 vote


It seems our forum agrees that Lennon and McCartney, as individual or primary composers, did far better than the Lennon/McCartney self-confessed "filler" songs. Out of their 58 total compositions, 16 (or 28%) ended up in the top 3. An impressive average! Out of the 20 cover songs, 2 ended up in the top 3.

Out of George's 5 songs, none so far made it to the top 3. Considering the volume of work he's up against, this isn't terribly surprising. His songs aren't most people's favorites, but they're not the worst either.

WORST SONGS, as rated by this forum per album:
Cover songs: 3 out of 6
Lennon/McCartney co-authorship: 2 out of 6
Lennon: 1 out of 6

The early songs Hello Little Girl, Like Dreamers Do and Love Of The Loved were given away in 63/64. Didn't break any records tho.

Quoted from harihead

So, what were these early songs and how do they stack up? I'm not an Early Beatles scholar, but here's what I found. Please join in if you have more!

Blimey, you've done your homework!!

I'm becoming increasingly more interested in the early period. I'm going to be uploading Purple Chick's - Strong Before Our Birth soon, in Lossless form. I think this is the best sound quality from any of the 'early' bootlegs. It's part of the Come Together Project which I'm gradually aquiring and uploading.