The Beatles are having a bit of a moment right now and I find that to be bittersweet.
The song “And I Love Her” by is a trending sound on TikTok at the moment and they just released a “new” song called “Now and Then” using archival demos from 1965 and AI.
I do not care if you are a hater and/or find this to be an ick but I used to be obsessed with The Beatles. I get it, I will leave any sort of credibility with me having a good taste in music out the door if I need to.
Buy what can I say? I loved the music, I loved the aesthetic. I loved watching clips and seeing the way they interacted with each other, the intricate stories behind their songs and how they shaped how pop and rock music is approached and appreciated.
I can ramble on about certain things about the Beatles, but since many people might be taking to Spotify to steam some more songs, I’d like to provide some commentary about a few of my favorites.
If I Fell
Released in 1964 on A Hard Day’s Night
This song appears on the same album as “And I Love Her,” but I actually like this song a little bit more.
The whole premise is right in the first stanza:
If I fell in love with you
Would you promise to be true
And help me understand
'Cause I've been in love before
And I found that love was more
Than just holding hands
In his 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, John Lennon said that “If I Fell” was his “first attempt at a ballad proper,” and showed that he was capable of writing “sentimental love ballads.”
Though much more complex ballads have been written by much other, more contemporary performers and songwriters, there is something about this that I find myself relating to and feeling more sedimental about rather than something like John Legend’s “All of Me.”
Not only is the song’s messenger asking their partner if they share the love expressed from one to another, but they are also asking them to not only share love, but help them move on from a place of mistrust.
They have been in love before, they know what it is like to fall in love, but because that feeling previously led to something bad and tragic, they are afraid of being at the other end of the cycle again; thats what it means when Lennon and McCartney says:
If I love you too
Oh please
Don't hurt my pride like her'Cause I couldn't stand the pain
And I would be sad
If our new love was in vain.
You do not have to be young to understand it, nor do you don’t have to be old enough to be a teenager in Feburary 1964, this is a feeling that anyone has had. Heartbreak is a gut punch that no one wants to experience ever again.
In My Life
Released in 1965 on Rubber Soul
If you have watched The Beatles Anthology documentary, you would know that this is the first song that plays in a flashback showing various snippets of the band in its eras throughout the hours-long feature to come.
This is a song I hate, but the reason I hate it is very irrational.
It makes me cry.
I assume John Lennon to be like myself; a nostalgic person who can often bring up certain places, people and things in the past in a positive light, however, there is only so much that one can do with it. You can’t change the past, but you can dwell on the memories you had before.
He exclaims:
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all
But then, as life continues on, life has to continue on.
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
What genuinely makes me cry is the realization that the present and the past is a bridge that one may physically or emotionally may never cross over. But in the real sense of things, that’s just the process of grief, the process of life and the realization of whether or not one truly “moves on.”
But what Lennon humanizes here, is that no matter how much he stops to think, stops to cry and to reminisce about the past; it serves as the building block - one is not truly whole without them. He says:
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more
Though there is some debated ideas about this, I feel that these lines build up to say “I love you more” because these lived experiences in the past enabled them to know the feeling of saying it.
At least it did for me.
The reason I cry when I hear it is because I think of the people whose genuine love and effort has helped me and I cannot say it back again, but in spirit.
Michelle
Released in 1965 on Rubber Soul
(If you are getting the drift that Rubber Soul is my favorite Beatles album, you are more than wrong.)
This is a song that I think has a very interesting backstory, one that I am sure we can all relate with.
Michelle was created from a sense of an obsession of Rive Gauche Parisian culture that bohemian, cool-kid Liverpudlians had back in the early 60’s. According to the 2010 book “A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song” by Steve Turner, McCartney went to a house party with art students, where he observed a guy with a goatee and a striped t-shirt singing a French song on the guitar, to the delight of some girls observing him.
He would use his imitation of the dude as a source of entertainment for the bandmates until 1965, where Lennon saw something more out of it, and out came the idea for “Michelle.”
I think of this song as a reflection of this fantasy that many young people still have - this archetype of this mysterious, but not-so-mysterious “cool girl.” Nowadays, they can be found in Bushwick, or “Dimes Square,” or any university belt in any major city.
They may not strictly have that Rive Gauche Parisian vibe, but the aptly-named “Michelle” in this sense is a person one will comically go out of their way to make themselves look cool in front of; even if it makes ‘em look like a jackass - i.e. McCartney’s chopped up French.
The theme is “what is the extent of what a dude is gonna do;” something that is still explored by heteronormative dudes today. He might not learn chopped-up french, but he might carry a tote bag, wear edgier, more revealing clothes, or fill up a Spotify playlist with the trending indie artists at the moment.
Paul McCartney was making his ass French in the 60’s, dudes that hang around NYU and Parsons today are doing the same shit (in theory.)
Conclusion
There is a lot of more Beatles songs I’d like to talk about, but it’d require a whole ass book in order to fit all the words in. But what I do hope is that I have given you some suggestions and entry points into my favorite band.