Every Moment Has A Song

(via Science Friday)

If you had a number one hit song, you would probably remember writing it. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote over 200 songs together over 50 years ago. So it’s no surprise that memories have gotten a little fuzzy when it comes to who wrote which Beatles song.

Take for example, the song “In My Life.” John claimed to have written that track, but Paul remembers it differently.

The two Beatles agreed to disagree. But die-hard fans remained curious—was there a way to get closer to the truth? True Beatles fans will tell you they’re more partial to songs written by Paul or John.

Mark Glickman, senior lecturer in statistics at Harvard University, was one such curious fan. He developed an algorithm to determine the authorship of “In My Life” and several other contested Beatles songs, by identifying what makes a song a John song or a Paul song. He joins Ira to discuss solving the mysteries of musical authorship with statistics…

Listen here:

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/who-wrote-that-beatles-song-this-algorithm-will-tell-you/

(via The Washington Post) (AP photo)

by Allan Kozinn

The Beatles produced some of the most enduring music of all time and rose to a level of near-universal adoration that few other musicians have achieved. But as the story of their brisk evolution from a scruffy, hardworking Liverpool dance hall combo to pop gods who reconfigured music and culture has been told, retold, debated and parsed, many myths have sprouted around it — some created by the Beatles themselves. Here are five.

“In the beginning,” John Lennon told Melody Maker, the British music magazine, in 1970, Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, “. . . put us in neat suits and shirts, and Paul was right behind him. I didn’t dig that, and I used to try to get George to rebel with me.” Lennon later complained to Rolling Stone that by giving up leather for suits, “we sold out.” Soon, the story of the Beatles chafing against Epstein’s directives was part of the lore.

The other Beatles — and sometimes, Lennon himself — remembered things differently. “It was later put around that I betrayed our leather image,” Paul McCartney said in “The Beatles Anthology,” “but, as I recall, I didn’t actually have to drag anyone to the tailors.” George Harrison said that “with black T-shirts, black leather gear and sweaty, we did look like hooligans. . . . We gladly switched into suits to get some more money and some more gigs.” Lennon put it this way to Hit Parader in 1975: “Outside of Liverpool, when we went down South in our leather outfits, the dance hall promoters didn’t really like us. . . . We liked the leather and the jeans but we wanted a good suit, even to wear offstage.” To which he added, “I’ll wear a . . . balloon if somebody’s going to pay me.”

Read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-the-beatles/2018/07/05/2a88109c-7f0a-11e8-b660-4d0f9f0351f1_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.de5f36da4ae9