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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:

79. “You’re Going To Lose That Girl”

78. “Oh! Darling”

77. “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”

76. “It’s All Too Much”

75. “P.S. I Love You”

74. “Don’t Let Me Down”

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This is one of the few occasions when The Beatles consciously took a bluesy approach to a song and pulled it off. Actually, that’s selling it a bit short. This is a powerful song that comes at you with no artifice or guile. It’s basically John Lennon pouring out his heart and baring his insecurities about his new love with Yoko.

Notice how the verses are soft and resigned, basking in all of the positives of the relationship. But in the chorus, John’s singing is anguished as he repeats the title refrain over and over to really heighten the urgency of his plea. It is a master class in rock vocals, and for once, the Let It Be sessions produced what they intended: an excellent song with no production embellishments that wins the listener over on the strength of its performance. It’s almost fitting then, in the counterintuitive spirit of the project, that it was left off the album and released as a B-side.

Let’s not forget about the way the band brings this material to life. It’s a typically shifty Lennon composition, with the gentle verses, the fiery refrains, and a bridge that skips into a different tempo. Ringo is on top of it all, blasting away at his cymbals in the chorus in time with Lennon’s pleading. The band is on top of its game and yet still sounds loose, abetted by Billy Preston’s marvelous organ work.

But it all comes back to the man on the mike, singing with the intent of someone whose love depended on it. “Don’t Let Me Down” is a simple song about a difficult task: making a love that endures the obstacles thrown down by human frailty.

73. “Rocky Raccoon”

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First of all, I have a confession to make. When I was a kid, I thought this song was about an actual raccoon. I’m not proud of it, but I actually believed that The Beatles had written a song about an anthropomorphized rodent in the Old West. This is who you’re trusting to give you in-depth analysis. I just thought you should know.

Well, can you blame me really? After all, “Rocky Raccoon” is so over-the-top that a gun-toting four-legged creature doesn’t seem so bizarre. If this is Paul’s idea of Country and Western, then it’s certainly heavy on the Western part. Every Old West cliché in the book is there: saloons, gunfights, drunken doctors, hoedowns. All that’s missing is a girl tied to a railroad track by some dude with a handlebar mustache.

But this is a revisionist Western without a doubt. Paul’s hero doesn’t win either the gunfight or the girl. Instead he eats some lead and is left at the end of the song licking his wounds in his rented room hoping to find comfort in the Gideon’s Bible that frames the narrative. It can even be interpreted that Rocky is dying in that room. The doctor said, “Rocky, you met your match,” and, inebriated though he might have been, his medical opinion would seem to hold more water. Maybe Rocky’s revival would have to take place in the next life.

The song doesn’t get bogged down in such questions though, because Paul is determined to keep it light. The saloon piano (brought to life by George Martin) invites everyone to dance after all the gunplay. And the intro, spoken in Paul’s Liverpudlian “twang,” lets you know that he’s in on the joke. So do slapstick touches like the doctor lying down on the table instead of his patient.

“Rocky Raccoon” is certainly a bizarre song, keeping with the spirit of the White Album. But McCartney’s deft touch makes it the rare novelty song that holds its value long after the novelty has worn off.

72. “Your Mother Should Know”

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Sometimes we all need a good sing-along. Paul McCartney knows this better than anyone, having grown up in a musical household. And Paul has arguably produced the most fodder for gathering around a piano, or by a jukebox, or even near a car radio and belting at the top of your lungs along with every friend or stranger in the vicinity.

On that level, “Your Mother Should Know” is nearly unassailable. It doesn’t matter what Paul is singing; it just elicits a Pavlovian response to join in. He could have replaced all the lyrics with the “da-da-da” part he uses at the end, and the song would work just the same.

Just because he could seemingly produce such material with astounding ease, that doesn’t mean that the material loses any value. “Your Mother Should Know” burrows its way into your brain like only the very best tunes can. And the sad piano notes in the brief instrumental breaks keep things from getting too saccharine, adding just the tiniest hint of melancholy to make those lustrous backing vocals from John and George sound even more buoyant.

In 1967 The Beatles were operating at such a breathtakingly high creative level that songs like “Your Mother Should Know” could easily be taken for granted, especially considering this one is not really about anything at all. But for its ability to get every listener to unleash their inner crooner and the way it follows the lyrics’ advice and lifts up our hearts, it deserves all the attention it can get.

71. “Piggies”

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This is the meat in the animal-song sandwich on the White Album, coming right between “Blackbird” and “Rocky Raccoon.” One can only wonder why Ringo’s unheralded “Wombat Rock” was left on the cutting-room floor.

George Harrison is the author of this clever track. Around this time, George had two ways of getting his point across. There was the more subtle approach, gentle pleas for love and understanding like “Within You Without You” or “The Inner Light.” And then there was the caustic broadside, a la “Taxman.” “Piggies” definitely falls in the latter category.

The Victorian-era instrumentation is the prefect accompaniment for Harrison’s message. The antiquated music is George’s way of saying that the chasm between classes never really narrowed. The pig analogy comes straight out of Orwell’s Animal Farm, but there is enough sarcasm and wit here to deem it a fresh take. The line “In there eyes there’s something lacking” is particularly astute.

The fact that “Piggies” was misheard in the most heinous manner imaginable casts a cloud over it to this day. But that should not in any way mitigate the song’s value as a trenchant piece of social commentary that rang true at the time of its release and, sadly, still does today.

70. “I’ve Just Seen A Face”

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Paul McCartney’s sweet ode to love at first sight is set apart by the hyper-speed pace that it keeps. It’s as if Paul can’t wait to tell us all about his discovery and he practically runs out of breath in doing so. From the Help! soundtrack, “I’ve Just Seen A Face” is yet another example of Paul’s gift for melody and facility with acoustic settings.

Everything is set up by the lilting intro. When Paul begins singing after that, the tempo change is quite a shock but the band never stumbles. That stutter-stepping acoustic solo in the song’s center is quite nifty. And the “falling” refrain provides a nice contrast to the rapid verses.

I also love how Paul’s accent turns the word “aware” into “a-wuh”. It’s one of his many outstanding singing performances, as he genuinely sounds just as surprised as the lyrics describe. None of us should be surprised at this point though by such a sublimely tuneful song from the boys.

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