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Friday, March 14, 2008

Beatles + American Idol = ?

Each year I typically watch about five episodes of a given American Idol season and that is typically broken down to three episodes of the initial auditions/embarrassments and two episodes of the best of the best singing...This week's episode fell into the second category as I was interested to hear the song choices and dream of what could be as the group sang Lennon/McCartney songs...

Here are the songs the 12 remaining selected:

1. "Got to Get You Into My Life"
2. "She's A Woman"
3. "In My Life"
4. "If I Fell"
5. "Come Together"
6. "Eleanor Rigby"
7. "Let It Be"
8. "You Can't Do That"
9. "Across the Universe"
10. "Eight Days A Week"
11. "We Can Work It Out"
12. "I Saw Her Standing There"

Not a bad group...some classics and some really, really, really bad/odd choices..."She's a Woman" and "You Can't Do That"????? Yeesh.

So I made my own list of songs that I would have loved to hear them sing...and because this week's show only focused on Lennon/McCartney songs I won't choose Harrison's "My Guitar Gently Weeps" or Starr's "Octopus's Garden."

1. "Rain" -- To me it is the ultimate b-side and if one of the 12 sang it this week, I would have actually called in and voted for them.

2. "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" -- First off, this would be the extended Anthology version and not the shorter edited version...and what would be better than selecting a non-song to sing in a singing contest...

3. "Run For Your Life" -- My far the most disturbing Beatles song and it would have been an interesting juxtaposition from all the boot-licking Ryan Seacrest was doing about how great Lennon/McCartney were/are...and then a would be Idol contestant rips into the lyrics "I would rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man"...it would have been priceless TV.

4. "A Day In The Life" -- The most important Beatles song [not the best mind you and just a hair ahead of "Tomorrow Never Knows"] deserves to be more popular in the Beatles canon and what better way to do that than to have the next Sanjia sing it. It would also require the in-house band to earn their money...

5. "And Your Bird Can Sing" -- I select his one for completely selfish reasons as it is my favorite Beatles song and it is just nice to hear every once in a while.

"Rain" can be found on the Past Masters, Volume 2 collection. "Run For Your Life" can be found on Rubber Soul. "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "And Your Bird Can Sing" are found on Revolver. The version of "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" referenced above can be found on Anthology 2 Disc 2. Lastly, "A Day in the Life" concludes the Sgt. Pepper's album.