Monday March 29, 2021 “Getting Better” The Beatles
Here’s the question for this week, “Do we really listen to the lyrics of songs?” I don’t know about you but with most of my favorite/familiar songs I maybe know the chorus to sing along with and don’t typically pay attention to the rest of the song.
So this week let’s delve into what these rock & roll philosophers are really saying, and what better place to start than with the Beatles, a band that you likely thought we knew absolutely everything that could possibly be known about them and use one of their happy, poppy tunes, “Getting Better”.
We have come to understand that although the entire Beatle catalog of songs are attributed to Lennon/McCartney each song had a primary songwriter who was then typically the lead singer and this piece of positivity belongs to Paul who is obviously doing the singing...with John contributing his opposing view to getting better, “can’t get much worse”.
But what we are going to focus on is the overall tone of the verses where Paul initially expresses his animosity for his schools and his teachers, who weren’t cool and were holding him down, turning him around and filling him up with their rules.
Although we might all agree with that sentiment about school, Paul suddenly turns even darker and becomes an angry young man who used to be cruel to his woman, he beat her and kept her from the things that she loved, man was he mean, but he’s changing his scene and doing their best that he can.
Wow, that can’t really be the ‘cute Beatle’ can it?
So here’s our first lesson, sometimes the melody and tempo of a song can be positive and upbeat but there might be dire thoughts lurking within lyrics.
Stay safe and well...and listen carefully and yes things are getting better.