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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:

124. “The Inner Light”

123. “Baby’s In Black”

122. “Think For Yourself”

121. “I Me Mine”

120. “All I’ve Got To Do”

119. “Polythene Pam”

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Another fragment of a song artfully wedged into the Abbey Road Side 2 medley, “Polythene Pam” finds John Lennon paying tribute to a girl whose sexual proclivities keep her in constant need of Hefty Bags. (I wonder if she prefers Cinch-Sack.) This is the same Pam we met on the previous Abbey Road song, “Mean Mr. Mustard,” when she was briefly introduced as Mr. Mustard’s sister. With characters like these, the Mustard family reunions must be weird, wild affairs.

Ringo’s drums are like a second hook in this song, thumping along at a rapid pace alongside the acoustic guitars. It’s also nice to hear John and Paul yelping at each other at song’s end, giving the song a looseness that was probably in stark contrast to the actual mood at the time. One thing for which you have to give these guys credit: with a few exceptions, their internal problems were usually checked at the studio door. When The Beatles got down to playing the song, they were a tight unit once again.

John’s pea-soup accent in the song makes him seem like a dirty old man, and he plays the role with a demented glee. It’s hard not to have a smile on your face right along with him for the entirety of “Polythene Pam,” but the song is so short that it never feels like more than a joke that went far enough to make it on record.

Lennon allegedly based the song on a dalliance that he had, but that’s just too much information for me, folks. “Polythene Pam” might fall just short of “killer-diller,” but it’s fair to say the song is “attractively built.” When we get to the list of kinkiest Beatles songs though, it will be hard to beat.

118. “Hold Me Tight”

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Allow me to go off on a little tangent for a while here. This song reappeared on my radar after being used in the 2007 film Across The Universe. It’s one of the few cover versions in the film that wasn’t an ill-conceived atrocity, and it reminded me how much fun the original, a bouncy Paul McCartney number on With The Beatles that nicely captures the bubbly enthusiasm of young love, actually was.

Back to the movie and the tangent. I’m all for anything that introduces new generations to The Beatles’ music, and Across The Universe did that just fine. But did it have to accomplish that feat in such dunderheaded fashion?

Maybe my opinion was swayed by the fact that the “Better Half” and I arrived late and were forced to sit in the second row. All of those garish images and psychedelic colors coming at me about nine inches from my face were a little bit disorienting, to say the least. I’ve had recurring nightmares ever since about being attacked by a giant strawberry.

What really bothered me though, was that it felt like Beatles 101 and never threw a bone to those of us who have already graduated. The obviousness of it all was disappointing. I mean, when you name characters Jude, Lucy, and Prudence, for example, you know that songs with those names involved are coming down the pike at some point, don’t you?

But the movie’s major flaw was how it played to the myth that The Beatles music was a 60’s soundtrack that somehow emanated from and commented on the turbulent times of the decade. That’s just silly. The Beatles wrote and played great music. That was their goal, and they achieved it with greater regularity than any band ever. That music still resonates today, long after the Civil Rights movement or the Vietnam War or any other of the historical signposts of that era that the movie implies are inseparable from the songs of The Fab 4, as if the 60’s were the chicken and The Beatles were the egg.

I contend that The Beatles would have had a similar impact had they broken onto the scene in 1950, or in 1970, or in 1860 or 2008. It is a coincidence that The Beatles arrived in the 60’s and bowed out at decade’s end, a coincidence that has provided a tidy timeline for knee-jerk cultural historians like the makers of Across The Universe, but still a coincidence, nothing more.

117. “Got To Get You Into My Life”

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Horns aplenty! Paul McCartney indulges his love of Motown in this Revolver track, although the end result actually veers closer to the horn-driven likes of Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave, albeit with far less grit. “Got To Get You Into My Life” is a little too polished for the soulful effect Paul was seeking, but it ends up working as bouncy pop.

You can find some quotes where Paul claims that pot was the inspiration for the lyrics, but I think you can go for a far less literal reading and get more out of the song. I prefer to hear the song as a testament to the benefits of open-mindedness and trying new things, the whole choosing-the-path-less-traveled ethos.

Just a song later on Revolver, similar mind-expanding sentiments would be expressed in a far more overt fashion by John Lennon on “Tomorrow Never Knows.” In comparing the two songs, you get a glimpse into the artistic temperaments of Lennon and McCartney. On “Got To Get You Into My Life,” McCartney’s “another road” sounds reassuring and safe. On “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Lennon invites you to the unknown and makes it seem both intimidating and alluring.

I’m not sure which path I’d take. I just think Paul would have been better served had the music held just a little bit of the mystery that his lyrics promised.

116. “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”

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If there is a theme to be found on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it’s not the obvious one of The Beatles pretending to be another band. Let’s face it, Lennon was right about this: after the opening two songs, the concept of an imaginary concert is pretty much abandoned until the reprise.

No, the theme would have to be the ennui of everyday life and the attempts we all make to break through the mundane and find grace, beauty, and wonder. As boundary-exploding as the music was, the stories are rooted firmly by ragtag, salt-of-the-earth characters like the overbearing parents of “She’s Leaving Home,” or the henpecked paramour of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” or the whole cavalcade of routine human existence that seems to pass through “A Day In The Life.”

But “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” stubbornly keeps its head in the clouds, never deigning to join us earthbound fools, and, for that reason, I consider it the least of the songs on this landmark album. Now, this is Sgt. Pepper’s we’re talking about, the greatest album of all time, so there’s no shame in being at the bottom of that barrel. And, for what it sets out to do, “Lucy” does just fine.

The whole LSD argument is a bit irrelevant. (My two cents is that Lennon was never one to shy away from admitting the sources of his inspiration, no matter how controversial, so if he says that the song title came from a drawing of Julian’s, I’m buying it.) There can be no doubt however that drugs fueled the non-sequitur imagery in the song that makes it play out like a lucid dream. Lennon had a way with out-of-left-field modifiers like “plasticene porters” or “kaleidoscope eyes.”

Adding to the dreamlike state is the otherworldly music, including the affected organ riff that sounds like technicolor bells. In typical Lennon fashion, the music effortlessly shifts tempos and moods, with the thumping chorus like an alarm after the reverie of the verses. But it’s all out in the ether somewhere, and Lucy never quite comes through as anything more than an intoxicating but untouchable vision.

Just as the narrator never quite catches Lucy, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” is equally as elusive as a song. There’s nothing wrong with that, but dreaming can only get you so far.

115. “Can’t Buy Me Love”

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The message is a bit muddled on “Can’t Buy Me Love,” but that’s easy to overlook because it’s delivered in such a pristine manner. With that chorus right up front to grab listeners (courtesy of George Martin’s suggestion), it tumbles out of the speakers with reckless abandon. The melody is fetching, and George Harrison’s guitar solo rumbles to all the right places. Paul McCartney sings his composition with gusto, and it all sounds great.

But when you listen to those lyrics, you’re not left with much more than a bunch of clichés all strung together. Throw in a few contradictions here and there (the narrator offers to buy his girl diamonds early in the song before recanting later on), and there a few flaws to be found in this seemingly perfect package.

You could argue that Paul was writing from a personal perspective as someone who has a lot of money and understands the shallowness of it all. If you take that tack however, it’s hard to identify with the song unless you’ve got a spare yacht or two hanging around the harbor.

The legacy of “Can’t Buy Me Love” no doubt benefits from the song’s ideal placement in the A Hard Day’s Night film. In it, the boys frolic on a field while the song plays in the background, perfect accompaniment to the manic images. The song works better in this context, but closer inspection reveals it to be solid on the perimeter but a bit hollow at its core.

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