The greatest Beatles song of all time, according to science
(Credits: Far Out / Apple Corps) Sat 18 January 2025 12:00, UK How on earth do you measure the impact of The Beatles? The size and scope of their success are barely reconcilable. We might view Taylor Swift as a giant of modern times thanks to the 114 million albums she has sold, but the Fab Four have flogged in excess of 600million. And when the young Liverpudlian lads burst on the scene, the world’s population was only 3.1billion, remarkably about 38.75% of what it is today. That places The Beatles at their pomp at around 14 times more popular than Swift is presently. Imagine that. It’d be borderline insufferable. Stranger still, you could easily argue that the band were paradoxically non-commercial. At least in their later days, they were as experimental as anyone else on the scene. Take, for instance, ‘I Am the Walrus’: there is no way that a song inspired by the sexual kinks of Eric ‘The Eggman’ Burdon, a working-class Geordie singer, transmuted in the drug-addled mind of John Lennon, a Jesus Christ-defiling oddball, run through the wringer of an avant-garde collision of rock and classical orchestration, taking on the ground-breaking compositional structure of a harmonic Moebius strip, should reasonably expect to be a hit that lives on for centuries.You could say the same for ‘A Day in the Life’, too. A self-professed free-form musical “orgasm”, working its way through a newspaper from the potholes in Lancashire to the apparent suicide of a Guinness heir, going on to be a huge hit? Unlikely. Certainly not on the BBC’s watch—they even tried to ban it. It was subversive and radical yet catchy and palatable. It was cool and aloof but had such a common touch it even kept up with the local papers. It was neo-classical and had differing time signatures and keys throughout, yet the crux of the first melody is effortlessly simple. Is it rapturous, or is it comforting?Whatever it is, it certainly wasn’t built to meet conventional standards—it challenged understandings of pop, transcending them and soared forth as a sonic experiment that reshaped what music could be. And that is why it is considered the greatest song that The Beatles ever offered, according to science. What is The Beatles’ best song?The science in question is the combined song study by critics and experts. Acclaimed Music compiled critics’ takes across the ages, musicologists’ findings, and every other accredited opinion on the song, crowning it The Beatles’ greatest achievement. It sits about ‘Strawberry Field Forever’ in second and ‘Hey Jude’ in third as the anthem, showcasing the reputation of the second half of their tenure atop the pop tree with each of those masterpieces arriving within not much longer than a year. Imagine that! It’d be borderline mind-blowing. And so, we see why one informed the other—how the wild success and supreme experimentation actually fuelled each other. They were doing things with such skill, in such a rapid advancement, that the public were forced to take note. As David Bowie said of John Lennon, and pretty much his mates by extension, “I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock ‘n’ roll.” However, it was the specific element that he highlighted next that had the biggest bearing on music. “He would rifle the avant-garde and look for ideas that were so on the outside on the periphery of what was the mainstream and then make them apply in a functional manner to something that was considered populist and make it work,” the ‘Starman’ happily shared.That’s the magic of what the Fab Four achieve together on ‘A Day in the Life’. You utter the lyric, “I heard the news today…” and whether it’s your 90-year-old grandad from Khazakstan or your eight-year-old niece from Huddersfield, they’re likely to reply, “Oh boy”. And I’ve also wager you’ve got a fairly interesting family history. It is this epic mix of searing musicality and sweet and soulful resonance that has ensured it has remained a timeless addition—a track that science and critics have rightfully placed at the top of the Fab Four’s tree. Still, it’s no ‘Africa’ by Toto which science discouraging championed as the greatest song of all time. Make of that what you will.[embedded content]Related TopicsSubscribe To The Far Out Newsletter