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To most Beatles fans, choosing between the songs of the Fab 4 is a bit like choosing between children. But, on the JamsBio exclusive, Playing The Beatles Backward, one intrepid fan dares to rank the original songs of The Beatles and give his reasons why in a worst-to-first countdown. Check back each day for the next five songs on the list, prepare to hit the message boards to defend your favorites, and follow the countdown all the way to Number 1.

The complete list to date.

The Last Five:

159. “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey”

158. “One After 909”

157. “I Want To Tell You”

156. “Don’t Bother Me”

155. “Sun King”

154. “What Goes On”

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Congratulations, Richard Starkey, on your first songwriting credit with the Fab 4. Although Ringo later claimed that his contributions to this song were minimal (a refreshingly modest contrast to the battles for songwriting credit later waged by Lennon and McCartney), the country and western swing on this Rubber Soul track certainly sounds like something Ringo might write. I also feel like the line in the song “feel my future fold” has a distictly Ringo-esque flair, the kind of thing that he would write just to make a rhyme but ends up having a sort of cosmic wisdom about it.

John claimed to have written the bulk of it, although I’m not sure his recollection can be trusted, considering he gave Paul credit for the middle eight even though the song doesn’t really have one. I guess it doesn’t really matter too much since “What Goes On” is relatively lightweight.

Some characteristics to recommend it: The nice harmonies, as John and Paul sweetly blend in with Ringo’s lead vocal; George’s Carl Perkins-flavored guitar solo; and John’s crazed squonking on rhythm guitar. Seriously, focus your ear on those little stabs John makes with his instrument on this one. It sounds like he’s playing a different song at times, but somehow it works.

On the negative, the lyrics veer toward the melodramatic (“Did you mean to break my heart and watch me die?”) And it was a bit of a disconcerting trend that Lennon and McCartney tended to leave their table scraps for Ringo to sing, making him akin to the kid in the Life cereal ads. I can hear the studio conversation now: “Give it to Ringo. He’ll sing anything.”

153. “Flying”

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I’ll be honest with you right up front and tell you that I’m not an instrumental kind of a guy. To me, you can lump Joe Satriani in with Kenny G. All instrumentals tend to send my finger hurtling toward the “Scan” button on the car radio with world-record type speed. They just bore me.

Now that I’ve unburdened myself, I also have to say that I don’t mind “Flying.” Maybe it’s because it’s very subtly done, not an excuse for everybody involved to show off their “chops” or whatever it is musicians like to blather on about. (I know I’m making a lot of friends here.)

The little flourishes here and there nicely complement the melody of the mellotron. It also seems like soundtrack music, which is, of course, what it became (for the Magical Mystery Tour film. And those chanting, wordless vocals that come in at the end to second the melody keep the proceedings from getting too heavy.

The crazed tape loops at the conclusion would anticpate future, more unfortunate experiments like “Revolution 9,” but “Flying” can’t be held accountable for that. It’s an instrumental, and it doesn’t make me want to fill my ears with tile grout, so it can’t be too bad.

152. “There’s A Place”

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Bouyed along by great harmonies and a nice sense of drama, “There’s A Place” really jumps out at you the first time you hear it. I’m not sure how well it holds up after that though, simply because there’s not a lot to the song.

Lennon wrote it, and he was apparently trying to do an homage to Motown. The Beatles were able to mimic Motown often and well during this time period, but I’m not sure this song qualifies once you get by the little a cappella part at the start. After that, it’s strictly Mersey beat.

The lyrics are trying to hint at something a little deeper than the simple variations on “I love you” they had been writing. But Lennon bails out too soon from his efforts to depict a safe haven in his head to be with his love, settling instead for easy rhymes that don’t necessarily work in context (“And it’s my mind/And there’s no time.”)

Throw in the all-too ubiquitous harmonica from the Please Please Me sessions, and you have a near-miss. The group would quickly learn how to fill such a great hook with worthier lyrics.

151. “Her Majesty”

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Beatles enthusiasts the world over know well the story of how this 23-second ditty ended up as one of the first hidden tracks in rock history (initial pressings of Abbey Road didn’t include it in the track listings.) Paul McCartney was trying to wedge the little tongue-in-cheek ode to the Queen into the first medley on Side 2 of the album, but decided it wasn’t any good and instructed an engineer to destory the tape. The engineer, either because he was under orders never to destroy anything the Beatles recorded or because he possessed amazing historical foresight, stuck the tape at the end of a rough cut of the album, where it stayed until it was re-played for Paul, who decided he liked it at the end. (This is also why there is an opening guitar blast in the song; that was originally intended for the end of “Mean Mr. Mustard.” And it’s why there is no closing chord in the song; it got left at the start of “Polythene Pam” and edited out.)

That’s a lot of info for a sliver of a song, sung affectingly by Paul with a twinkle in his eye. I felt the need to explain it again, because, if you’re like me, you’ve always been bothered by the song’s placement after what should have been the group’s Grand Finale. To me, it undercuts the symmetry of the closing medley, the great last line about making and taking love, that lovely, last horn blast. That’s the way it should have gone down.

Instead, you’ve got a Paul solo performance as the group’s last word, and a hugely anticlimactic last word at that. I know that Paul has spoken since about it being a happy accident and that the group felt that “Her Majesty” helped take some of the air out of the somber proceedings in that final medley. Well, when a group as wonderful as The Beatles signs off for good, things should be somber. Things should be majestic, and poignant, and moving, and all the other highfalutin’ words that mean you get chills hearing it. “Her Majesty’ doesn’t give you any of that, and so it has no right being the closer.

Of course, Let It Be ended up being released after Abbey Road anyway, so what’s my point really? The point is that if I want to listen to “Her Majesty,” I cue it up and play it solo. When I listen to Abbey Road, I hit stop as soon as “The End” ends, drawing the final curtain down properly.

150. “Do You Want To Know A Secret”

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John Lennon was inspired by a song from the Snow White movie to write “Do You Want To Know A Secret.” (Also inspired by the movie but left on the cutting-room floor were songs like “Take This Apple And Shove It” and “Dopey’s Theme,” which was an instrumental, of course.) Lennon then gave the hand-off to George Harrison to take lead vocals, since George wasn’t yet writing his own material at the time of Please Please Me.

George actually sounds a little bit like John with a slight head cold here, and it’s interesting to hear him singing such unabashedly romantic lyrics, since those songs would be atypical of his own songwriting output. I actually think he plays the part well here.

Although the song isn’t exactly a deep treatise on love, it’s got some nice elements to its construction. The little spoken-word “You’ll never know…” intro sets the song up well in a retro, 50’s way. Paul’s bass-playing really drives the song, as it’s more in the forefront than usual here. And I like the fade-out, which never really resolves. Nice touch.

One side note: I was introduced to this song by that only-could-have-happened-in-the-80’s Beatles medley by Stars On 45. I heard that again not too long ago and was struck by how bizarre it was and how that crazed concoction became a hit. I guess with The Beatles, anything is a possible hit, even disco medleys that sound like they were edited by a paper shredder.

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