Help!

Today we start a great album--Help! is the Beatles' fifth British and ninth American album, as well as the soundtrack from the film of the same name. As we saw with A Hard Day's Night, the first half of the album contains songs from the movie, while the second half contains mostly original material as well as a couple of covers. Although Rolling Stone rank it only #332 on their list, we may decide after hearing it that it deserves a higher spot. We'll have to wait and see!

Interesting fact about the cover art: If you check out the cover here, you'll see the guys holding their arms out at wonky angles. Some of you may recognize that they're spelling in flag semaphore--however, those of you familiar with it know they aren't actually spelling "help". They're actually spelling "NUJV", for reasons unknown. :P

We start the album with the titular "Help!", written by John. This was another important marker in the road for Lennon; according to Wikipedia:

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.

By the time the album Help! was released in the States in August of 1965, The Beatles were firmly established and no strangers to fame, nor to the pressure to perform and live up to their image. They found solace and expression in their music: 

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.

We'll definitely see a lot of interesting expressing going on as we delve deeper into the sixties and The Beatles' songwriting zenith. 

Another interesting fact: 

In February 1985, "Help!" became the first Beatles song licensed for a US television commercial. The Lincoln–Mercury division of Ford Motor Company paid $100,000 for the rights to the song, but not for the use of the original Beatles' recording. The song was re-created by a sound-alike group with assistance from George Martin.

As for my opinion of the song, I love it. :) It's one of my favorite Beatles songs of all time (so far!). I wonder, however, how it would've sounded with a slower tempo, the way Lennon originally wanted to do it. It might have ended up so heartbreaking that no one would want to listen to it. :P Overall, it's a great song, and one that everyone can relate to--everybody feels alone and needs company every now and then. Who better than The Beatles to cheer you up?

That's all for today... See you tomorrow! :)

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Heard It Tally: 10

Songs Completed: 74