John’s vocal is both world-weary and genuinely emotional at the same time, and the boys do a fabulous job on the harmonic crescendos. I’m a slut for strange sounds when presented in a proper context.Īlthough Lennon was full of shit when he reinvented “Help!” as a song that captured the beginnings of the existential crisis that would give the world Yoko Ono, it’s still one of the Beatles’ greatest singles (particularly when paired with the raucous “I’m Down”). I also place in this group the two cover songs on Side 2: “Dizzy Miss Lizzie” and the beginning of Ringo’s regrettable love affair with country music, “Act Naturally.” These songs are on the album because Lennon & McCartney were too tired and/or too busy to write more material-in other words, classic album filler.īefore we get to the great songs, two originals on Side 2 are somewhere in-between the extremes: Harrison’s “You Like Me Too Much” and the Lennon-McCartney duet “Tell Me What You See.” I love the slightly dissonant harmonies on “You Like Me Too Much,” and though the gestalt of “Tell Me What You See” reminds me too much of Jay & the Americans’ Latin bent, the dronish quality of the song and John’s low notes are very compelling. In this category I place the songs from the film that follow the Beatlemania formula but now sound forced and lifeless: “The Night Before,” “I Need You,” “Another Girl” and “You’re Going to Lose That Girl.” While the boys make a game attempt with a key change here and non-standard chords there, these songs signify that the lovable moptops are very, very tired of being the lovable moptops. The lyrics are uniformly tiresome boy-girl stories. I do agree with the critics that some of the tracks display the exit from Beatlemania and the path to Rubber Soul, but only from a musical perspective. And contrary to popular critical opinion, Side 2 (the “extra songs”) isn’t that much better than Side 1 (the film songs). ![]() There are some truly great songs but the gap between great and godawful is huge. ![]() Originally written December 2012, revised April 2016.Įxcept for John’s book selection routine and his relentless interrogation of the jeweler, Help! isn’t much of a movie.
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