I grew up on The Beatles - mostly albums like Rubber Soul, Hard Days Night, and Help! - but until now I had never saw down and listened to an album properly. I decided to pick up Revolver, which I was pretty sure was another that I grew up on, but apparently I was only familiar with about half the tracks.
One of the tracks I had never heard was "Tomorrow Never Knows", and coincidentally I bought this only a week after hearing that song featured in Mad Men. I'd been thinking of buying a Beatles album for months, but who knows, maybe Mad Men unconsciously pushed me to it.
It's not like I'm going to add anything to the written discourse on The Beatles here, but I was interested to realize that for the most part all the songs I recognized the most were from Paul McCartney, but all the songs I liked the most were from John Lennon or George Harrison.
Paul's songs: "Eleanor Rigby" is indisputable, and most of his others are very good. But you've also got "Good Day Sunshine;" pretty much a cheesefest. And "Yellow Submarine". I guess it's endearing, in a sort of...fuck it, I might as well listen to Raffi.
George's songs: 3/3, some of the best songs on the album.
John's songs: "Doctor Robert" is cool but doesn't blow me away. Otherwise all of his songs destroy."And Your Bird Can Sing" is definitely the best song on here that I didn't already know (and one of my favorites period).
I'm pretty glad I've finally broken my cherry on buying cliche, iconic albums. I recently met someone who said he makes a conscious effort to avoid listening to bands everyone has heard of. Most people aren't so transparent about it, but I think it's true that some people treat a band's fame as a license not to explore their back catalogue. You get a false sense of familiarity with a band based on a few famous tracks. Personally I've always felt that you need the context of an album to fully appreciate a song anyway.
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