Earlier in 1965, “Ticket to Ride” had introduced a new page in the Beatles songbook: an anti-love song alternating between dejection and sarcasm with an unsteady, lumbering beat to match. “Help!” at first blush seems a throwback to the snappy pop and three-part harmonies that had defined the group’s early singles, with just enough of the post-Hard Day’s Night folkiness to fit [...]
Archive for February, 2012
143) The Beatles – “Help!”
Posted in 08, 1965, tagged british invasion, the beatles on February 28, 2012 | 3 Comments »
142) Sonny and Cher – “I Got You Babe”
Posted in 07, 1965, tagged sonny and cher on February 2, 2012 | 4 Comments »
The Byrds proved the burgeoning counterculture could be prettied up for the mainstream, but Sonny and Cher watered it down and sweetened it enough that conventional pop fans would hardly know what they were drinking. But the hippie generation’s Steve and Eydie weren’t bandwagon jumpers, exactly. Sonny Bono had co-written the proto folk rock “Needles [...]
141) Herman’s Hermits – “I’m Henry VIII, I Am”
Posted in 05, 1965, tagged british invasion, herman's hermits on February 1, 2012 | 8 Comments »
One of the things that makes the pop charts more fascinating than carefully curated lists of “important” records, like Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, is all the junk that filters through. That’s not an insult — junk may not be particularly well-written, and it’s often annoying, but at its [...]
