24 Stars On 45 Vol 1 (Starsound) 295 Pts

 

Starsound - Stars On 45 Vol 1 - Beatles Medley (splicing single, Stars On 45 - The Album, USA#1 UK#2)

 

Medley: "Intro" / "Venus" / "Sugar, Sugar" / "No Reply" / "I'll Be Back" / "Drive My Car" / "Do You Want to Know a Secret" / "We Can Work It Out" / "I Should Have Known Better" / "Nowhere Man" / "You're Going to Lose That Girl" / "Stars on 45"

 

Stars on 45 was a Dutch novelty pop act that was briefly very popular in the UK, throughout Europe, and in the U.S. in the early 1980s. The group later shortened its name to Stars On in the U.S., while in the U.K., Ireland, and Australia they were known as Starsound. The band, which consisted solely of studio session musicians under the direction of Jaap Eggermont, formerly of Golden Earring, popularized the medley, by recreating hit songs as faithfully as possible and stringing them together, with a common tempo and relentless underlying drum track. The point was to provide a danceable disco record which used familiar tunes.

 

This single with its forty-one word title continues to hold the record for a #1 single with the longest name on the Billboard charts, due to the legalities requiring each song title be listed. The "Stars On 45 Medley" single was later awarded a platinum disc for one million copies sold in the US alone. Having already been a worldwide hit.

 

^ My goodness the video is as dreadful as the track IMHO.

23 My Love (Paul McCartney/Wings) 297 Pts

 

My Love (Red Rose Speedway album USA#1 UK#9)

 

"My Love" is a love song by Paul McCartney and Wings, and is the most successful track from their 1973 album Red Rose Speedway. McCartney wrote it about his feelings for his wife Linda, who was also in the band.

 

An orchestral version was played when Monica and Chandler got married on the hit US sitcom Friends.

 

22 All You Need Is Love (Beatles) 300 Pts

 

All You Need Is Love (Magical Mystery Tour album, USA#1 UK#1)

 

"All You Need Is Love" is a song written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon/McCartney. It was first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first live global television link. Broadcast to 26 countries and watched by 400 million, the programme was broadcast via satellite on June 25 1967. The BBC had commissioned the Beatles to write a song for the UK's contribution. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at #362 in their 500 greatest songs of all time.

 

The Beatles decided the song should be their next single the day before the Our World broadcast. Released in the UK on July 7, it went straight to No. 1 and remained there for three weeks. It was similarly successful in the US, reaching No. 1 for a week (appearing on the American LP version of Magical Mystery Tour in November).[6]

 

It was the last song both recorded and released by the band before the death of the band's manager, Brian Epstein, on 27 August 1967, little more than a month after the song was released.

21 Got My Mind Set On You (George Harrison) 301 Pts

 

(Video 1) Got My Mind Set On You (Cloud Nine album USA#1 UK#2)

 

(Video 2)

 

"Got My Mind Set on You" is a song written by Rudy Clark and originally recorded by James Ray in 1962. It is best-known for the cover version released by George Harrison. Produced by Harrison and former ELO member Jeff Lynne. This song also topped the charts in Australia.

 

Two music videos were released for the cover version. The first (directed by Gary Weis) starred a young Alexis Denisof vying for the heart of a girl in an arcade. The second (also directed by Weis), is Harrison sitting and playing in a study. As the song progresses, furniture and knick-knacks (like a stuffed squirrel and mounted warthog) begin to dance along with the song. In the middle of the video, Harrison performs a stunning backflip from his chair and follows with a dance routine before jumping back to his seat. The second received significant airplay, and was nominated for three MTV VMAs.

 

Woops, I thought I'd finished this last year .... nevermind:

 

20 Let It Be (Beatles) 315 Pts

 

Let It Be (Let It Be album USA#1 UK#2)

 

"Let It Be" is a song by The Beatles, released in March 1970 as a single, and (in an alternate mix) as the title track of their album Let It Be. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

The single reached number one in the U.S., Germany, Australia, Italy, Norway and Switzerland and number two in the UK. It was the final single released by the Beatles while the band was officially considered an active group. Both the Let It Be album and the single, "The Long and Winding Road", were released after McCartney's announced departure from and subsequent break-up of the group.

 

McCartney said he had the idea of "Let It Be" after a dream he had about his mother during the tense period surrounding the sessions for The Beatles (the "White Album"). McCartney explained that his mother—who died of cancer when McCartney was fourteen—was the inspiration for the "Mother Mary" lyric. McCartney later said, "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing 'Let It Be'." He also said in a later interview about the dream that his mother had told him, "It will be all right, just let it be."

 

The master take was recorded on 31 January 1969, as part of the 'Apple studio performance' for the project Get Back. McCartney played piano (a Blüthner Flügel from Leipzig), Lennon played bass, Billy Preston played organ and George Harrison and Ringo Starr assumed their conventional roles on guitar and drums. This was one of two performances of the song that day. The first version, designated take 27-A, would serve as the basis for all officially released versions of the song. The other version, take 27-B, was performed as part of the 'live studio performance', along with "Two of Us" and "The Long and Winding Road". This performance, in which Lennon and Harrison harmonised with McCartney's lead vocal and Harrison contributed a subdued guitar solo, can be seen in the film Let It Be.

 

The single used the same cover photograph as the Let It Be album, and was originally released on 6 March 1970, backed by "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)", with a production credit for George Martin. This version includes orchestration and backing vocals overdubbed on 4 January 1970—under the supervision of Martin and McCartney—with backing vocals that included the only known contribution by Linda McCartney to a Beatles song.

19 A Hard Day's Night (Beatles) 323 Pts

 

A Hard Day's Night (A Hard Day's Night album USA#1 UK#1)

 

"A Hard Day's Night" is a song by English rock band The Beatles. Written by John Lennon, with help from Paul McCartney, and credited to Lennon/McCartney; it was released on the movie soundtrack of the same name in 1964. It was later released as a single, with "Things We Said Today" as its B-side.

The song featured prominently on the soundtrack to The Beatles' first feature film, A Hard Day's Night, and was on their album of the same name. The song topped the charts in both the United Kingdom and United States when it was released as a single. Featuring a prominent and unique opening chord, the song's success demonstrated that The Beatles were not a one-hit wonder in the United States.

The American and British singles of "A Hard Day's Night" as well as both the American and British albums of the same title all held the top position in their respective charts for a couple of weeks in August 1964, the first time any artist had done this.

 

The song's title originated from something said by Ringo Starr, the Beatles' drummer. Starr described it this way in an interview with disc jockey Dave Hull in 1964: "We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day... and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, '...night!' So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night.'

 

In 1965, "A Hard Day's Night" won the Beatles the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group. In 2004, this song was ranked number 153 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

18 Can't Buy Me Love (Beatles) 326 Pts

 

Can't Buy Me Love (A Hard Day's Night album USA#1 UK#1)

 

"Can't Buy Me Love" is a song composed by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and released by The Beatles on the A-side of their sixth British single, "Can't Buy Me Love/You Can't Do That."

 

When pressed by American journalists in 1966 to reveal the song's "true" meaning, McCartney denied that "Can't Buy Me Love" was about prostitution, stating that, although it was open to interpretation, that suggestion was going too far, saying: "The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well, but they won't buy me what I really want." Although he was to later comment: "It should have been 'Can Buy Me Love' " when reflecting on the perks that money and fame had brought him.

 

While in Paris, The Beatles stayed at the five star George V hotel and had an upright piano moved into one of their suites so that song writing could continue. It was here that McCartney wrote "Can't Buy Me Love." The song was written under the pressure of the success achieved by "I Want to Hold Your Hand" which had just reached number one in America. When producer George Martin first heard "Can't Buy Me Love" he felt the song needed changing: "I thought that we really needed a tag for the song’s ending, and a tag for the beginning; a kind of intro. So I took the first two lines of the chorus and changed the ending, and said 'Let's just have these lines, and by altering the second phrase we can get back into the verse pretty quickly.'" And they said, "That's not a bad idea, we’ll do it that way".

The song's verse is a twelve bar blues in structure, a formula that The Beatles seldom applied to their own material.

 

Can't Buy Me Love became The Beatles' fourth UK number-one single and their third single to sell over a million copies in the UK.

 

Whilst the Beatles established four records on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Can't Buy Me Love" at number one:

Until Billboard began using SoundScan for their charts, it had the biggest jump to number one: (number twenty-seven to number one; no other single ever did this).

It gave The Beatles three consecutive number-one songs ("I Want to Hold Your Hand" was replaced at number one by "She Loves You" which was in turn replaced by "Can't Buy Me Love").

When "Can't Buy Me Love" went to number one (4 April 1964), the entire top five of the Hot 100 was by The Beatles, the next positions being filled by "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me," respectively. No other act has held the top five spots simultaneously.

During its second week at number one (11 April 1964), The Beatles had fourteen songs on the Hot 100 at the same time.

Rolling Stone ranked "Can't Buy Me Love" at #289 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

 

17 Something/Come Together (Beatles) 344 Pts

 

Something (Abbey Road album USA#1 UK#4)

 

Come Together (Abbey Road album USA#1 UK#4)

 

"Something" is a song released by The Beatles in 1969. It was featured on the album Abbey Road, and was also the first song written by George Harrison to appear on the A-side of a Beatles single. It was one of the first Beatles singles to contain tracks already available on a long playing (LP) album, with both "Something" and "Come Together" having appeared on Abbey Road. "Something" was the only Harrison composition to top the American charts while he was in The Beatles.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney—the two principal songwriting members of the band—both praised "Something" as among the best songs Harrison had written. As well as critical acclaim, the single achieved commercial success, topping the Billboard charts in the United States, and entering the top 10 in the United Kingdom. The song has been covered by over 150 artists including Elvis Presley, Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, James Brown, Radiohead, Julio Iglesias, Smokey Robinson and Joe Cocker, and is the second-most covered Beatles song after "Yesterday".

 

In 1970, the same year the Beatles announced they had split, "Something" received the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. "Something" continues to garner accolades from the musical establishment decades after its release, with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website naming it as the 64th-greatest song ever. According to the BBC, "Something" shows more clearly than any other song in The Beatles canon that there were three great songwriters in the band rather than just two." The Beatles' official website itself said that "Something" "underlined the ascendancy of George Harrison as a major song writing force". In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) named "Something" as the 17th-most performed song of the 20th century, with five million performances in all. Higher Beatles songs on the list were "Yesterday" and "Let It Be", both written by Paul McCartney (though attributed to Lennon/McCartney). In 2004, "Something" was ranked number 273 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

 

"Come Together" is a song by The Beatles written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon/McCartney. The song's history began with Lennon writing a song for Timothy Leary's failed gubernatorial campaign in California, United States against Ronald Reagan, which promptly ended when Leary was sent to prison for possession of marijuana.

 

For a time, the song was banned by the BBC, as they believed the song's reference to "shoot[ing] Coca-Cola" could be construed as either a cocaine reference or an advertisement of a soft drink. Rolling Stone ranked "Come Together" at #202 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

 

In 1973, "Come Together" was the subject of a lawsuit brought against Lennon by Big Seven Music Corp. (owned by Morris Levy) who was the publisher of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me". This was because it sounded similar musically to Berry's original and shared some lyrics (Lennon sang "Here come ol' flattop, he come groovin' up slowly" and Berry's had sung "Here come a flattop, he was movin' up with me"). Before recording, Lennon and McCartney deliberately slowed the song down and added a heavy bass riff in order to make the song more original. The case was settled out of court.

16 Woman (John Lennon) 347 Pts

 

Woman (Double Fantasy album USA#2 UK#1)

 

"Woman" is a 1981 single by John Lennon from his 1980 album Double Fantasy. Written by Lennon: it is an ode to his wife Yoko Ono, which is introduced by Lennon whispering, "For the other half of the sky ...", a paraphrase of a Chinese proverb, one used by Mao Zedong.

In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine on December 5, 1980, Lennon said that "Woman" was a "grown-up version" of the song "Girl".

 

"Woman" was the second single released from the Double Fantasy album, and the first Lennon single issued after his death on December 8, 1980. The B-side of the single is Ono's song "Beautiful Boys". The single debuted at #3 in the UK, then moving to #2 and finally reaching #1, where it spent two weeks, knocking off the top spot his own re-released "Imagine". In the US the single spent three weeks at #2. The single was also a commercial success in New Zealand where it spent 5 weeks at #1.

 

 

 

15 Help! (Beatles) 347 Pts

 

Help! (Help! album USA#1 UK#1)

 

"Help!" is a song by The Beatles that served as the title song for both the 1965 film and its soundtrack album. It was also released as a single, and was number one for three weeks in both the US and UK. "Help!" was written primarily by John Lennon, but credited (as were all Beatles songs written by either person) to Lennon/McCartney. Paul McCartney reports that he had a hand in writing the song as well, being called in "to complete it" in a two-hour joint writing session on 4 April 1965 at Lennon's house in Weybridge. He later said that the title was "out of desperation". In 2004, "Help!" was ranked number 29 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

 

The documentary series The Beatles Anthology revealed that Lennon wrote the lyrics of the song to express his stress after The Beatles' quick rise to success. "I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for 'Help'," Lennon told Playboy. Writer Ian MacDonald describes the song as the "first crack in the protective shell" Lennon had built around his fragile emotions during The Beatles' rise to fame, and an important milestone in his songwriting style.

 

In the 1970 Rolling Stone "Lennon Remembers" interviews, Lennon said that because of its honesty it was one of his favourites among the Beatles songs he wrote, but he wished they had recorded it at a slower tempo. In these interviews, Lennon said he felt that "Help!" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were his most genuine Beatles songs and not just songs written to order.

14 Coming Up (Paul McCartney/Wings) 349 Pts

 

Coming Up (McCartney II album UK#2 A-side)

 

Coming Up (Live, single only USA#1 A-side)

 

"Coming Up" was the opening track from Paul McCartney's McCartney II album, written by McCartney and released in 1980. Like the rest of the album, the song had a minimalist synthesized feel to it. It featured humorously-processed lead vocals from McCartney, who played all the instruments and shared harmonies with his wife Linda McCartney.

John Lennon had liked the song, crediting it for driving him out of retirement to resume recording.

 

A live version of the song was recorded in Glasgow, Scotland on 17 December 1979 by Wings during their tour of the UK. This version had a much fuller sound and was included as one of the two songs on the B-side of the single; the other B-side was also a Wings song, "Lunchbox/Odd Sox", that dated back to the Venus and Mars sessions. Both B-sides were credited to Paul McCartney & Wings (see the alternate cover), the first time this credit had been used for a Wings record since "Junior's Farm."

In the US, radio stations bypassed the McCartney solo A-side and played the live Wings B-side.

 

"Coming Up" is also well known for its video. It is an early example of electronic trickery, with Paul McCartney playing ten roles and Linda McCartney playing two. The "band" (identified as "The Plastic Macs" on the drum kit—a nod to Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band") features Paul and Linda's imitations of various rock musician stereotypes, as well as a few identifiable musicians. In his audio commentary on the 2007 video collection The McCartney Years, McCartney identified the four characters that were impersonations of specific artists: Hank Marvin (guitarist from The Shadows), Ritchie Blackmore from Rainbow / Deep Purple, Ron Mael of Sparks (keyboards), the drummer, Ginger Baker from Cream, and a 'Beatlemania-Era' version of himself. While others such as author Fred Bronson have suggested that there are other identifiable impersonations in the video, such as Andy MacKay, Frank Zappa and Neil Young.

 

The B-side, the live Wings version of "Coming Up", became a #1 U.S. Billboard Hot 100 hit in June 1980. The A-side, the McCartney solo version, reached #2 in the UK.

 

13 I Feel Fine (Beatles) 351 Pts

 

I Feel Fine (Past Masters Vol 1 USA#1 UK#1)

 

"I Feel Fine" is a riff-driven rock song written primarily by John Lennon (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and released in 1964 by the Beatles as the A-side of their eighth UK single. The single reached the top of the UK charts on 12 December of that year, displacing The Rolling Stones' "Little Red Rooster," and remained there for five weeks. It also reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1964. The B-side was "She's a Woman".

"I Feel Fine" was the first of six number one songs in a row on the American charts, a record at the time. The subsequent singles were "Eight Days a Week", "Ticket to Ride", "Help!", "Yesterday", and "We Can Work It Out". The record was equaled by The Bee Gees in 1979 and surpassed by Whitney Houston in 1988.

 

Lennon wrote the guitar riff while in the studio recording Eight Days a Week. "I wrote 'I Feel Fine' around that riff going on in the background," he recalled. "I told them I'd write a song specially for the riff. So they said, 'Yes. You go away and do that,' knowing that we'd almost finished the album Beatles for Sale. Anyway, going into the studio one morning, I said to Ringo, 'I've written this song but it's lousy.' But we tried it, complete with riff, and it sounded like an A side, so we decided to release it just like that." George Harrison said that Lennon's riff was influenced by a riff in "Watch Your Step", a 1961 release written and performed by Bobby Parker and covered by The Beatles in concerts during 1961 and 1962.

Paul McCartney said the drums on "I Feel Fine" were inspired by Ray Charles's "What'd I Say".

 

"I Feel Fine" marks the earliest example of the use of feedback as a recording effect. Artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks, and The Who used feedback, but Lennon remained proud of the fact that The Beatles were the first group to actually put it on vinyl.

 

12 Hello Goodbye (Beatles) 356 Pts

 

Hello Goodbye (Magical Mystery Tour album USA#1 UK#1)

 

"Hello, Goodbye" is a song written by Lennon/McCartney and first recorded by the English rock band The Beatles. The song was released as a single in November 1967, "Hello, Goodbye" topped the charts in both the United States and Britain where it spent seven weeks at number one, and was the Christmas number one for 1967. Though the songwriting credit is Lennon/McCartney, it was written only by Paul McCartney.

 

Alistair Taylor, who worked for the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, had asked McCartney how he wrote his songs, and McCartney took him into his dining room to give him a demonstration on his harmonium. He asked Taylor to shout the opposite of whatever he sang as he played the instrument—black and white, yes and no, stop and go, hello and goodbye. Taylor later said, "I wonder whether Paul really made up that song as he went along or whether it was running through his head already."

 

Under the working title "Hello Hello", the Beatles recorded the backing track on 2 October 1967, and added vocals and a guitar overdub on the 19th. After further overdubs of bass guitar and viola, recording was completed on the 2nd November, and mixing on the 6th.

The song features a coda which came spontaneously in the studio. Of this, McCartney said "I remember the end bit where there's the pause and it goes 'Heba, heba hello'. We had those words and we had this whole thing recorded but it didn't sound quite right, and I remember asking Geoff Emerick if we could really whack up the echo on the tom-toms. And we put this echo full up on the tom-toms and it just came alive."

11 Imagine (John Lennon) 367 Pts

 

Imagine (Imagine album USA#3 in 1971, UK#6 (1975), UK#1 (1981), UK#45 (1988), UK#3 (1999))

 

"Imagine" is a song written and performed by English rock musician John Lennon. It is the opening track on his album Imagine, released in 1971. "Imagine" was released as a single in the United States where it reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100. When asked about the song in one of his last interviews, Lennon declared "Imagine" to be as good as anything he had written with the Beatles. The song is one of three Lennon solo songs, along with "Instant Karma!" and "Give Peace a Chance", in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked "Imagine" the 3rd greatest song of all time.

 

Ono indicated that the lyrical content of "Imagine" was "just what John believed — that we are all one country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out."

 

"Imagine" was released as a single in the United Kingdom in 1975 (in conjunction with the album Shaved Fish) where it peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart. Following Lennon's death in 1980, the single re-entered the UK chart and was number one for four weeks in January 1981. "Imagine" was re-released as a single in the UK in 1988 (peaking at number 45) and again in 1999 (reaching number three).

 

Since its release, "Imagine" has been included in a broad array of most-influential and greatest-songs-of-all-time lists. In 1999 BMI named "Imagine" one of the top 100 most-performed songs of the 20th century. "Imagine" ranks #23 in the year-2000 list of best-selling singles in the UK. In 2004, "Imagine" ranked #3 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, behind The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" and Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone".

On 1 January 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named "Imagine" the greatest song in the past 100 years as voted by listeners on the show 50 Tracks. The song ranked #30 on the Recording Industry Association of America's list of the 365 Songs of the Century bearing the most historical significance. Virgin Radio conducted a UK favourite song survey in December 2005 and "Imagine" was voted into the top spot. It beat Beatles songs "Hey Jude" and "Let It Be" (both predominantly written by Paul McCartney, although credited Lennon/McCartney). In Australia, it was selected the greatest song of all time on the Nine Network's 20 to 1 countdown show on 12 September 2006 and voted eleventh in youth network Triple J's Hottest 100 Of All Time on 11 July 2009. The song was named number one on Australia's MAX channel's 5000-song countdown that went through the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

This is an excellent listing Richard, pity you didn't get around to posting the top 10 to complete it. Maybe one day you will find the time to finish a great chart.

I can't finish this list without Richard's input, but having looked through his list I am guessing the top 10 songs were as follows, in no particular order.....

 

She Loves You

I want to hold your hand

Hey Jude

Get Back

Just Like Starting Over

Silly Love Songs

Wonderful Christmas Time

Ebony and Ivory

Say Say Say

My Sweet Lord

 

 

It's difficult to say in what order they might have come out, but I would think either She Loves You or I want to hold your hand might be the top 2.

This is obviously a different list and not sure exactly when this list was put together but I only came across it yesterday. It was from the Rolling Stone magazine and they rated the Top 10 Beatles songs thus :-

 

1. “A Day in the Life”

2. “I Want to Hold Your Hand”

3. “Strawberry Fields Forever”

4. “Yesterday”

5. “In My Life”

6. “Something”

7. “Hey Jude”

8. “Let It Be”

9. “Come Together”

10. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

 

http://www.classicpopicons.com/the-beatles...greatest-songs/