Solo Beatles single by single thread

I never understood the following lyrics for so long:

"This riff ain't hip or square
Well done or rare
May end up one more weight to bear" - This Song

"I met a Mr. Greif - and he said" - Crackerbox Palace

 

Thanks guys for clearing that up. I've already commented on a ton of B-sides and I've been here for 160 pages so I appreciate that we cleared up the little matter of the PTP singles.

 

Haristar - Harrison does have some sketchy lyrical moments over his albums, but I'd say he's at least avg as a lyricist. 10 years later Huey Lewis and the News had that single "Hip to Be Square"-thank you Georgy!

The riff might be one more weight to bear-that's definitely the court case for "My Sweet Lord". The riff has no category cause Harrison's argument in court was that riffs and music notes get used over and over. So it's George's tongue in cheek dry humor to throw in well done or rare like the song is a piece of meat. Maybe he thought that the court case made him feel that's how music was viewed.

Hey he was around the Monty Python people at the time and there are a number of jokes in the song anyway.

Mr. Grief spelled wrong was a real person he knew or met according to Harrison's bio, from what I remember.

 

From I Me Mine:

​

 

This Is Love - such a great song, possibly the best on the album. Shouldve been the second single and gotten more notice, but I guess Fab was irresistible.

 

This Is Love...
...provided as close a feeling to the joyous, uplifting, pure pop of the 'early Beatles' as a solo Beatle single ever came for me. The fact that it wasn't John or Paul - or even Ringo - that achieved this but the hitherto, 'serious, spiritual and philosophical' George, was extraordinary. The same George who sermonised to us all on Living In the Material World and Extra Texture was now having fun and making catchy pop records again.

George's slide guitar soars as usual, and I especially love the second verse where the acoustic rhythm part really propels the song forward. For me, the weakest link is actually the chorus. The rather banal "This is love - this is la-la-la-la-la-love" unfortunately manages to prevent the song from being in the top tier of my favourite Harrisongs.

Breath Away From Heaven:
Atmospheric album track though it was, I was disappointed at the time that This Is Love ended up without a non-album track on its b-side.
Obviously, George intended there to be one (hence the Handle With Care story) but when that didn't happen, why not Hottest Gong In Town? I would love to have heard Jeff and George remix that track as they'd done with Zig Zag on the previous single. It's a fine song and arrangement that I felt was kind of thrown away (with what sounded like a quick five minute mix), alongside the 'Songs by George Harrison Vol 2' book, released some years later.

Alternatively, it was a missed opportunity to release another of the rejected Somewhere in England tracks? (as he'd done on the first Cloud Nine single release).

 

I really enjoy the guitars on This Is Love. George's playing is extraordinary, but the way Jeff layers them (in his typical manner) really sends this track over the top. It ends up sounding like an ELO/GH collaboration, which must have been a dream come true for Lynne. Solid effort.

 

One thing Jeff Lynne was able to do is take George's lead vocals up a notch. He never sounded so confident as on Cloud Nine.

 

This Is Love. Great song. Should have been a major hit.

 

And love him or hate him, he got the drums up in the mix and added some snap to George's songs so they didn't end up bland sounding on Cloud Nine.

And getting back to the singles aspect, I like "This Is Love".

I wish Jeff had produced Gone Troppo and Somewhere in England also.

 

I agree, it's very unfortunate the song didn't have a better chorus befitting the quality of the rest of the song. That aspect of it really drags down my overall enjoyment, and keeps it from being considered a favorite of his works. It had such unrealized greatness potential otherwise.

 

Similar to John's "#9 Dream" for me.
A dreamlike verse almost "Across the Universe" worthy. I'm flying with John on a magic carpet through the cosmos the first time I heard the song and then...
AH! BOWAKOWA, pousse pousse , AH! BOWAKOWA..

Returned me to earth immediately.

See what I did there ? I snuck in a comment about a single I missed earlier in the thread!

 

Press to Play was not only the first LP I purchased on release day (by ANYONE) but by the time OLR was released I was a teen DJ on an AM Adult Contemporary Station and we played the HELL out of this song. I remember reading Billboard while I was on the air and the shock of never seeing it chart. On a side note, I may have been the first jock in the country to play 'That was Then, This is Now' by the Monkees earlier that year. My PD knew I was a 60's freak and let me have a few 'moments'

 

At the risk of igniting another "hypocritical" outrage in this thread about lyric usage, the nonsense word syllables used in #9 Dream don't bother me for a few reasons. First because the song is about a dream/dreaming and many things in dreams don't make any sense. Second they sound good together (musical even spoken, let alone sung) regardless if they make no sense and mean nothing. When I first heard the song I figured it was a foreign language, as many others probably did too. It wasn't, but it may as well have been, and that doesn't spoil the song. I personally prefer songs with complete nonsense lyrics that mean nothing, but the words (or fake words) sound good together, versus trite thoughts/cliche phrases and rhymes/lazy space-filling vocalization sounds suddenly thrown into a song. La-la-la-la-love falls into that last category of my lyrical pet peeves (lazy space-filling vocalization sounds) the same way "My Love" does with it's incredibly annoying woh-woh-woh-woes.*

You may not see or hear any difference between the chorus infractions of This Is Love versus #9 Dream, but they are worlds apart to me.

*This Is la-la-la-la-Love is nowhere near as incredibly annoying as My Love is--just to be perfectly clear on my "diss" levels here.

 

Good tune. Easy to see why this was a single, and equally easy to see why common sense prevailed and they realized "Handle With Care" was too good to be a B-side.

 

Isn't is simply a contraction of, "Once upon a time, long long ago..." that opens so many children's books?

 

Personally I love that lyric - #9 Dream is perfect

 

This Is Love.

 

It's not the lyric that lets the song down for me , it's the jarring transition musically ...(Ah BOWAKOWA section ).

It doesn't match the verses mood and isnt anywhere near as satisfying
as the verses musically in my book .

 

The frustration about the "woh, woh, woh" vocalisation in My Love is that it would have sounded fabulous if played by strings or lead guitar. A guitar line using that melody would have added some much needed edge to the song's sound.

 

Can we agree on "inconsistent" rather than "hypocritical"? The latter was a poor choice of word on my part

 

I still love ya Paul - no need to hide!

 

Can we agree on liking each other rather than loving each other?

 

I'm a lover not a liker.