Awesometastic

For kicks: The worst Beatles song by album, in chronological order, starting with Help!
(I'm not doing ones pre-Help! because I am not as familiar with them, and they are generally weaker albums anyways. I'll try and limit my pick to the worst song by album, but a few albums might get a couple nods.)

Help! - Dizzy Miss Lizzy - While not a bad song, it hearkens back to the less mature pop rock of that they had spent the every song before it repudiating with huge steps forward as musicians, composers, lyricists, and arrangers. It sounds particularly weak and dated because it closes the album, and immediately follows what is arguably the Beatles' most mature song to date, "Yesterday." This song belonged on With the Beatles or Beatles for Sale, not Help!.

Rubber Soul - What Goes On - Easy pick. Figures they would give Ringo the worst song they wrote for the album. Interestingly it is one of the Beatles' first genre crossing forays, as they delve a good bit into country music here. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work at all musically, with generic rhythms and oddly stuttering twangy guitar lines. The melody is fairly subpar and the lyrics are just inane. While not a terrible song - in all fairness, it's just mediocre - it is again very noticeable because the rest of the album is so damn solid.

Revolver - Tomorrow Never Knows - Yeah I said it. This song gets so much love and I will never ever know why. The lyrics are stupid and meaningless attempts at faux depth, but that's not where it really goes wrong. The major fault of the song is the complete lack of melody or harmonic structure, which it compensates for by flooding the background with aggressively dissonant white noise and completely unmelodic and unrelated motifs. Lennon at his very worst, throwing all musicality out the window to try to sound psychedelic. Take a lesson from Hendix, Cream, or even George: to be psychedelic one need not throw all other song writing conventions to the wind. Of course you didn't learn did you? More on this later.

Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart's Club Band - She's Leaving Home - An interesting exercise by Paul, taking a common popular song topic of the day - the teenage runaway - and turning it on its head to show the emotional turmoil of the girl's parents. Unfortunately, it is overly melodramatic, which combined with its slow tempo and lack of strong rhythm means the song tends to drag for the listener. It just seems interminable; far too long a time to spend with over the top melodramatic misery. I have to work to get through the song without skipping.

Magical Mystery Tour - This one was a closer call. Our first contender is the infectious but vapid "Hello, Goodbye," which Paul famously wrote in like five minutes. While completely meaningless and silly bubble gum pop, it's also incessantly catchy nature and brimming with enthusiasm. The kind of awesome reprise saves it from worst of the album territory, leading me no choice but to glumly pass the torch to our winner: Blue Jay Way. While also not a terrible song, it is sloooooow and dreary, making it's four minute run time seem interminable. While it to has some good things going for it - some great Ringo fills and a solid melody - it just can't overcome the dragging tempo. Another song that I have to work reeeally hard not to skip.

The White Album - There's A LOT of filler here, so again we have some stiff competition for the worst song of the album. Is it the utterly pointless and horrible sounding "Wild Honey Pie?" The equally pointless though slightly less horrible sounding "Why Don't we do it in the Road?" The often despised "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da (love this song)," "Piggies (don't hate it)," "Birthday (it's kinda dancey so I can stomach it)," or "Honey Pie (screw you, this song is great)?" Nope, again Lennon takes the cake by completely throwing away all musicality for the sake of psychedelia with the absolute waste of time that is "Revolution 9." This time, throwing away just harmonic structure and melody aren't enough for him, and he has to do away with any sense of music whatsoever. It's like eight minutes of nails on a chalk board. What would EVER possess you to do something like that?

Abbey Road - Well I'm picking on Lennon again, but in all fairness he had totally mentally and emotionally checked out of the band by this point, basically leaving McCartney to run the show. Fortunately McCartney was able to step up with the awesome, if somewhat silly and vapid at parts, medley and George had some great material to fill in the gaps. But Lennon runs away with the stinker of the album with a double win. He again turns in the interminably long song with "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." It clocks in at almost eight minutes long, which wouldn't be so bad, if there was something going on musically, but. there. is. not. It just repeats the same not particularly interesting guitar riff ad infinitum while Lennon waxes on with utterly meaningless lyrics - ironic given the amount of crap he gave McCartney for doing the same thing, but at least McCartney did it with catchy melody and concise run times. Then as if we hadn't heard the riff enough for the past eight minutes, Lennon uses it AGAIN for "Because," and somehow finding even more meaningless and vapid lyrics and faux depth. Ugh. And Octopus's Garden is fun, catchy, and melodic, if not high art. So screw off haters.

Let it Be - We're going by the Naked release here, because the Phil Spector additions are terrible. George may be my favorite Beatle, but he does not get a pass for I Me Mine. In fairness it was thrown on last minute because they had nothing else to put there, but none of them, including George really wanted it there. In any case, it's fairly terrible and one of the worst songs of the album. From the endlessly repeated meaningless words to the anticlimactic trail off ending, this is just not up to snuff for a Beatles song. George isn't alone: "One after 909" is up there too in the horribleness scheme of things. I can't really pick out what I don't like about it, so I'm reticent to include it here, but for some reason, listening to it just gives me a splitting headache. Ugh, I need to turn it off before I get a migraine.

And there you have it. The worst of the best.