Komme, Gib Mir Deine Hand

Special post today... It's the enormously popular German version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand"! This version is pretty much exactly the same as the English version, except in German. Great way to learn some German vocab, actually, and it's neat to see just how much you recognize--English is (mostly) a Germanic language, after all. :)

This jam and "Sie Liebt Dich" ("She Loves You") were the two songs The Beatles re-recorded in German, under the assumption that they had to sing in German to win over fans in that country. They later realized it probably wasn't necessary, but it still left us with some great non-English Beatles songs. :) This recording session was also the guys' only one outside of the UK during their career.

Tomorrow we start the next album, Beatles for Sale. Excited! I'm skipping doing an album summary for Something New since there was a notable dearth of new material. So, I'll see you tomorrow!

Note: For the Heard It Tally, I'm counting "Komme, Gib Mir Deine Hand" but not "Sie Liebt Dich" since I only listened to the former; I feel the two songs should count as one song anyway since they're basically only covers of themselves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heard It Tally: 5

Songs Completed: 52

Matchbox

"Matchbox" gave me a similar feeling that "Slow Down" did--that it belongs more in the early Beatles repertoire. Again, that's not to say it's not a fun rock-and-roll cover. :) Originally by American rockabillyCarl Perkins, "Matchbox" was sung by Ringo and included George Martin on piano. [I hope we're familiar enough with George M. to not need a link to his Wikipedia page. :P ] musician

The lyrics are definitely classic rock-and-roll. The song is about "a lovelorn 'poor boy' with limited prospects", a well-used and reliable theme in many genres of music. I'm not overly fond of rockabilly; to my confessedly untrained ears it sounds repetitive and I soon tire of the lyrics as well as the music. I love a good guitar solo as much as anyone else, but I just don't usually hear anything that stands out to me. No doubt plenty of people will find this outrageous, but I'm a product of my times, and not every song or genre of music can interest everyone all the time. :)

That's all I've got for today. Til tomorrow!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heard It Tally: 5

Songs Completed: 51

Slow Down

The next few songs will be from the ironically-titled Beatles album Something New. Most of the songs have already appeared on A Hard Day's Night (hence the irony) so we'll be covering only two or three songs from this album. 

The first new song is "Slow Down". Originally by Larry Williams (talented musician and BFF of Little Richard), it's been covered by several artists (including Led Zeppelin) over time. It's got that classic 50's rock-and-roll sound and it actually kind of reminds me of Back to the Future (you know the scene I mean).

The lyrics aren't overly remarkable or new; the singer wants his girl to be faithful and dump her other boyfriend. Overall this one's not terrible but it didn't really capture my attention the way some of their other songs have done. It definitely harks back to the early Beatles days, when they were listening to Motown and rock-and-roll and doing great covers of great songs. I feel like this one belongs in those early albums; we're starting to move into The Beatles' next era and a song like "Slow Down" almost feels out of place, despite it being a pretty decent song and very well-played/sung. 

That's it for today... Hope you enjoyed the movie review (just below this post) as well as today's song. :) See you tomorrow!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heard It Tally: 5

Songs Completed: 50