It is time for my annual Beatles Week, a celebration of the band as well as a way to keep blogging as well as part of my ongoing analysis of The Beatles. I missed last year because of dad’s sudden hospital admission and death. Other than that instance, every year I have been able to keep up this tradition established by Mark, who no longer blogs, sadly.
Each year has had a theme, and this year will be no exception.
2017 – No Beatles Week Due To Death In The Family
2016 – Song Rankings Within Albums
2015 – Christmas Albums
2014 – Cover Songs
2013 – B-Sides
2012 – Songs Sung By George
2011 – Songs Sung By Ringo
2010 – North American Albums
2009 – Random Song Titles
This year?
As I prepared, researched and ruminated on this year’s theme, and even as I started writing this particular blog post I didn’t have much of an idea. About halfway down to this point in the post I did have an idea (this post, by the way, has taken me three days to get to this point) and by the time I got to this point I didn’t have an idea for this year’s theme.
And now I research and ponder some more.
There are plenty of ideas that I could go with. Songs the Beatles wrote but gave away, or non-album singles, or songs written specifically for film. Ultimately I settled upon Anthology tracks, songs that were recorded and never officially released until the Anthology project, and even some of those tracks are incomplete.
Now, I’m not talking about things like “”Taxman” (Take 11) or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (Demo). Instead I’m referring to songs that most of us heard for the first time on Anthology. I say “most of us” because there are bootlegs where some of these songs have appeared, and that is all I am willing to admit.
Because Anthology came out after my usual resources of Tell Me Why and BeatleSongs were published I won’t be able to use those books as I have in the past. Instead I will have to rely on liner notes and other research to discuss the songs I use this year.
It may not be a perfect theme overall, but it certainly does seem to work for this year.