By Rick Sladek with Elizabeth Taggart

The criteria for my playlist is simple: the songs have to all be original and all four Beatles had to have contributed to them. The six songs come from different albums and, with the exception of my No. 2 song on the list, “She Loves Me,” the songs are stylistically worlds apart.

No. 1
“Ask Me Why”
1962

Why is this the first song on my list? “Ask Me Why,” was written in 1962 by Lennon and McCartney for the Beatles’ first album, “Please Please Me.” The Beatles were still figuring out their own style, so this particular song has a lot of “doo-wop” influence that more or less disappears from their later sound. The song is a bridge between the 1950s and the 1960s. Link to lyrics: “Ask Me Why”

No. 2
“She Loves You”
1963

The incessant ‘yeah, yeah, yeahs’—no other song sounds like it. The song is pure energy. It defines Beatlemania, even more so than “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” It’s arguably a little lacklustre musically, but they were experimenting with chord structures—they always did this—but the relationships between certain chords were unlike anything else. Classical musical theorists who analyzed it have said it had never been heard before in pop music. Link to lyrics: “She Loves You”

No. 3
“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”
1965

Among the trivia that comes with this song is that it was written and recorded in 30 days—an unbelievably short time frame. This song is so experimental. You have to remember, pretty much all pop music has a chorus to break the verses. “Norwegian Wood” has no chorus, no hook, just verse after verse. Jeff Emerick was the engineer on the song and I was lucky enough to meet him and interview him via a video chat on my Facebook page. Here’s a link to the lyrics: “Norwegian Wood”

No. 4
“Tomorrow Never Knows”
1966

This song from their 1966 album, “Revolver” is, again, so stylistically different—the entire album is one of their best. For “Tomorrow Never Knows,” all four Beatles were given reel-to-reel tape recorders. They went home and they recorded sounds, talking, whatever they heard or wanted to record. They brought the tapes back to the studio where George Martin, the producer for virtually all of the Beatles albums, took the reels, cut them up and then they threw all of the pieces up in the air. He then spliced the pieces together. The sounds came out backwards, they were slowed down, sped up, and they were all held together by John Lennon’s lyrics and verses. It was also the first time that a Lesley speaker, originally designed for an organ, was used with vocals. George fed John’s voice through the Lesley speaker for a swirling, pulsating sound. The link to those lyrics: “Tomorrow Never Knows”

This song is unusual because it featured a full orchestra for the first time and in a way orchestras hadn’t been used. George Martin directed them himself and they didn’t use any sheet music but entirely improvised. Martin recorded each of the orchestra sections separately. The musicians began to play starting with their lowest pitch and worked their way up over 24 bars to that instrument’s highest pitch. You can hear an isolation of this technique in this video from “A Day In the Life” on YouTube. John and Paul each had a piece of the song—lyrics and music—but neither of them went anywhere until they separated them with these orchestral movements—a musical “rush” of sound. The final chord is all four Beatles on two pianos holding a 45-second chord. The link to those lyrics: “A Day In the Life”

No. 6
“The Two of Us”
1969

The folky, country vibe of “The Two of Us” from the “Let It Be” album—you just wouldn’t think it’s the same people who created their previous songs. It’s unlike anything they ever did. They used two acoustic guitars, one electric and Ringo on drums to produce this song that is a pop-folk genre. The song was created between ‘68 and ’69 and it coincided with their film by the same name. As with all of these songs, all four Beatles participated. It was a Lennon-McCartney song, maybe more of a Paul song, but it was a collaboration. Link to lyrics: “The Two of Us”