The Top 500 List and the Problem with the Beatles

Back in the 1980s, hockey pools – those competitions to see who could draft the best fantasy hockey team – were required to institute some variation on the “Wayne Gretzky Rule”. Wayne Gretzky was so skilled, so fundamentally superior, he was either removed as a draftee or he was severely handicapped (e.g., -80 points) so as to give the other teams a fighting chance. Wayne Gretzky, if included in competition and not handicapped, would almost certainly guarantee a victory.




This notion of handicapping needed to be applied in some fashion to the Greatest Band of All Time – The Beatles – when creating the Top 500 list. The Beatles are terribly problematic when creating pretty much any sort of popular music Top List that encompasses their phenomenal, improbable run from 1963 to 1970.

All lists are inaccurate or at least disingenuous when it comes to art. Think of the best albums of all time, your absolute favorites in your point of view. Let’s say The Clash London Calling, 1979. If I was honest, I would say my Top 10 list for 1979 would have to include the following as contenders:

• London Calling
• Spanish Bombs
• Clampdown
• Rudie Can’t Fail
• Guns of Brixton
• Death or Glory
• Revolution Rock
• The Card Cheat
• Train in Vain

Pink Floyd The Wall, however, would be fighting for some contention with “Comfortably Numb”, “Nobody Home” and “Mother”. The Boomtown Rats' “Someone’s Looking at You” and “I Don’t Like Mondays” would be vying for spots. Single entries from The Damned (“Love Song”), XTC (“Life Begins at the Hop”), Supertramp (“The Logical Song”), The Specials (“A Message to You Rudy”), and Led Zeppelin (“Fool in the Rain”) would deserve consideration. Neil Young’s “Pocohontas” would enter in the Top 3.

But if I was completely honest, at least SIX songs would be from London Calling. What kind of list is that? A “Top 10 Songs of the Year” list that has one band responsible for over half of the songs is boring, featureless, and banal – it paints the author as not a fan of music, but a fan of a particular band. How can one critique such a list? What if an individual did a Top 10 list for the year 1983 and it was dominated by Def Leppard’s Pyromania? I would say “you, bad-haired Sir, are a Def Leppard fan, and I feel sorry for you, and why did I waste my time even glancing at your pathetic list”. London Calling is surely a better album, but an “All London Calling” Top 10 list would be indefensible in much the same way. But if this pyromaniac list maker only included “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages”, but ALSO included REM’s “Radio Free Europe”, something from the Violent Femmes and U2’s War, and maybe some Tears for Fears, then we would have a bonafide LIST – that is to say, we would have a critically defensible list that denotes “thoughtful music fan” (not that a list from 1983 must include these entries...mine would, but some sort of variation is the point). Variety is indeed the spice of life.

(Note: a diehard, true-blue Def Leppard fan is the type of person who would eat the bones of a Tears for Fears fan out of principle. People who adore Def Leppard – sorry I can’t say “adore”, that is unmasculine – people who fucking dig Def Leppard, who think they “rule”, usually aren’t music fans. At least as far as I can tell).

The Beatles were so powerful a musical entity that they created serious trouble for the construction of the Top 500. In a mere seven years, they OWNED the kingdom of music. The talent was irrepressible, their vision unsurpassed. They trail-blazed modern recording and experimentation, they defined mulitple genres and were prescient of many more. They could produce a number one hit that was as complex as a symphony, yet as catchy as nursery rhyme. Too much has been written about them, I will say no more.

The Beatles needed to be handicapped somehow. Initially I instituted a general rule that no band in the list would be given more than five spots total. One exception is Swervedriver – not the greatest band in the world, but my most favorite, a distinction which in itself deserves an essay. Swervedriver was given as many spots as intuitively necessary, which turned out to be nine songs. The Beatles were not given an exception. This was an awful mistake.

In my initial run, I gave the Beatles FOUR songs. FOUR! These four were, as I understood it in my head at the time, my most sacred and personal Beatles songs. They were:

#8. Dear Prudence
#52 Here Comes the Sun
#108 Blackbird
#429 Tomorrow Never Knows.

To all music fans, I apologize for this atrocious decision. My handicap was unjust. I came to this conclusion when I listened to the remastered box set, beginning to end. This remastering job is more than exceptional. It is the greatest sonic restoration in the history of our modern music age. It is like having John Lennon on your lap with Ringo boinking you on the head like a floor tom. Wow. Crazy.

This of course led me to listen to the entire catalogue, beginning to end. I suddenly realized that I indeed needed to handicap the Beatles, but not to this ridiculous extent. I had thrown out too many crucial pieces of the cannon. If I was to be truly honest about how the Beatles should fit into the Top 500, they would probably garner about 80 songs. I’m not kidding – 80 songs would deserve serious consideration and quite easily bump an equivalent number of other artists/songs from the list. As I listened, I was horrified to acknowledge that I dismissed “A Day in the Life” and “Let it Be”. What was I, some kind of complete idiot? AM I ARGUING THAT “Happy Hour” by The Housemartins, is a BETTER SONG THAN “Let it Be”? I should have been fined, perhaps flogged, for such indiscretion.

However, my Top 500 was already created, and so many valuable, worthy songs had already been screened out. What could I afford to include while not sacrificing diversity – all those singularly fabulous songs that made the initial grade? The eventual outcome was nine songs (tying Swervedriver) accorded to the Beatles:

#8. Dear Prudence
#20. Let It Be
#34. A Day in the Life
#54. Here Comes the Sun
#63. Hey Jude
#111. Blackbird
#150. Strawberry Fields Forever.
#212. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
#434. Tomorrow Never Knows

While I knew my Top 500 was not a truly honest (i.e., accurate) one, this reconsideration of the Beatles laid the issue bare. When it came down to positioning the new entries, I realized that two of the new ones were higher than three of the initial four. This does not reflect well on my methods – you would assume that initially rejected songs should land in the 400-hundreds range upon reintroduction. Nope. "Let It Be" is so classic, so obviously foundational to the history of popular music, that it deserved "All-Time Top 20" status. "A Day in the Life" was not far behind. "Tomorrow Never Knows" was beaten out by all the new entries, yet it was one of the initial inclusions, which makes little sense. It was fairly devastating to exclude “I Am the Walrus”, “Norwegian Wood” and “Lucy in the Sky”. But it had to be done.

Why? There is a lesson in all this. My methodology (if we can call this subjective process by such a term of rigor) is flawed. But it is only flawed in that it forces diversity. Yes, I know the Beatles catalogue exemplied diversity in its own right, but there is still a need for diversity of other artists and their songs. Because without such diversity you lose beauty and history and the vicissitudes of genre formation and reformation. You would fail to capture the fullness of the landscape under question. This is why I really enjoy special installations of historically important painters at an Art Gallery, yet always drift to the general collection to get some much needed variety. Really, does anyone have party and exclusively play the Beatles all night? You might, if it was a special, Beatles-themed party, but generally not. Why not? Everyone loves the Beatles, right? Yes, they do (and if you don’t like the Beatles, you are strange and problematic creature). But Beatles domination cannot stand, as domination generally cannot.

For my part, I am happy to give up the “I Am the Walrus” so that I can include Stereolab, Ladybug Transistor, and School of Seven Bells. None of these bands are even close to the Beatles’ level influence…but they have some damn fine songs, Top 500-worthy songs. To have them snowed under by the Giganticism of the Beatles would be a shame really.

Nine songs will have to do. I think the Beatles would agree.

Postcript:

My all time Top 20 Beatles songs are as follows:

1. Dear Prudence
2. Let It Be
3. A Day in the Life
4. Here Comes the Sun
5. Hey Jude
6. Blackbird
7. Strawberry Fields Forever
8. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
9. Tomorrow Never Knows
10. I Am the Walrus
11. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
12. Norwegian Wood
13. It's All Too Much
14. We Can Work It Out
15. With A Little Help From My Friends
16. Yesterday
17. All You Need Is Love
18. Ticket to Ride
19. Two of Us
20. Martha My Dear

The fact that #10 to #20 are not in the Top 500 is tragically necessary.