Best Beatles Song

The Beatles released their first single in October 1962 and their last album in May 1970, and everything in this bracket happened inside those seven and a half years. That is the thing that makes the matchups strange. Please Please Me and Tomorrow Never Knows are separated by less time than most bands take between two records, and the second one sounds like it arrived from a different century.

Three writers are on the ballot and they wanted different things. Lennon's songs tend to start from a mood and stay there, McCartney's from a character or a scene, Harrison's from a grievance or a hymn. Put Helter Skelter next to Here, There and Everywhere and you are not really comparing songs, you are picking which Beatle you would rather be stuck in a room with.

A fair number of these were built in the studio rather than written on a guitar. A Day in the Life is two fragments glued together with an orchestra between them. Strawberry Fields Forever is two performances in different keys, sped up and slowed down until they met. Rain has a vocal running backwards. Those tracks compete here against She Loves You, which was written in a van and recorded in an afternoon.

Every candidate plays. Where the band has an official video it is that; the rest are the label's own audio uploads of the album masters, so what you hear is the version on the record.