A Couple Interesting Ways to Analyse Individual Beatles' Popularity/Contribution Within the Group

Here's a couple very quantitative way to determine which Beatle added more to the group…

– assign point values in descending order based on who wrote each of the Top 50 Most Played Beatles Songs on last.fm (Paul has a slight edge over John)

– using the Beatles #1 album, count who wrote more of their #1 Hits (and again, Paul wins, this time by a much more dominant margin)


(via Reddit)

Once upon a time in a University library, I happened upon a back issue of Journal of Popular Culture or some such where some academic had done a *very* in-depth study of who wrote which Beatles songs, giving percentage contributions to each.  I think I have a copy of that article around here somewhere – I should go read it again – very interesting material.  And if you haven't read “Revolution in the Head“, go read it now!  And if you prefer to come at the songs from more of a musical perspective than a lyrical/thematic/cultural approach, I highly recommend Allan J. Pollock's “Notes On” series. 

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