How would "Here Comes the Sun" have done as a single for The Beatles?*

I'm not a Beatles fan at all, but HCTS is a fine song, really.
BTW I always thought it was a single.

 

Now that's just downright delusional.

Not the chart positions, but the belief that Lennon & McCartney would have allowed George to have both sides of a single.

 

Oh it's a great, great song. I don't think it was totally single material.

 

It's the only Beatles song my wife can name (on a good day she can add "I am the eggshell man") so I'm guessing big hit.

 

I have to respectfully ask if you listened to the Beatles in back in 1969? Which of their songs, aside from Cold Turkey, failed to top the charts?

 

Chem: I hear what you mean, Brother. Its true, in many ways, The Beatles could do no wrong. I just think HCTS doesnt have that extra something to push it to #1. Top 10, probably.

 

And over on the Record World chart, Something/Come Together was #1 for 2 weeks, then it flipped at #1 as Come Together/Something for 3 more weeks...

 

Would have been Number One.

 

George might not have wanted that either.

 

Something/Come Together stalled at #4 in the UK

The Ballad Of John & Yoko stalled at #8 in the US

 

Seems like the top of the charts to me as Something/Come Together was a US number 1 and that's the country I'm referring to.

 

I don't know about single potential. All I know is every time I hear HCTS, it puts a smile on my face. It's pure perfection.

 

Here Comes The Sun seemed to be very popular at the time, many of the teenyboppers in my grade school knew it.

I think it definitely would have been a US #1, but with Something and Let It Be released only five (?) months apart it might have been tough to squeeze it in.

 

Geez I thought that was a "tasteless" Rolf Harris joke...but there really was such a titled song!

 

Number 1 definitely. I was only 9 and listened to AM radio, NOT LPs, so my first exposure to Here Comes The Sun was on NBC in 1970 when they were broadcasting the solar eclipse.

 

No.1 for 6 weeks over Christmas/New Year 1969/1970 and bought for tots by the million, including the undersigned. A generation's memories raped.

 

I agree- #1

A great song, no a really, really great song, that fit perfectly into all the post-Psychedelia/Roots revival that was going on at the time.

It's a strum along-campfire-singalong tune that fit perfectly into AM radio due to the Moog synthesizer.

And it makes you happy when you hear it.

 

I hope we hear the lead guitar version when the 50th comes out...maybe THAT can be released as a single.

 

I agree it would have been a hit. #1? Hard to say...Chart placement is a fickle beast.

I wonder if there would have been a single edit that dropped much of the pre-vocal guitar? The album track opens pretty quietly for slotting on AM radio.

 

Not really, since the week before Billboard changed their rules and the sides were still charted separately neither had reached #1 (IIRC one had stalled - spending two weeks in a row at the same position implying that the next week it would have started to fall, and the other one had started to fall the previous week).

Of course combining the stats for both songs into a single listing the following week would give it enough chart points to artificially grab the #1 position, but neither song had actually EARNED the position on its own.

Plus what about 'The Ballad Of John & Yoko'? There's no way to even pretend that one earned the top spot on the chart in the US in 69, so.....

 

Still seems like the top of the charts to me, so you'll have to try again. And let's be real for a change. The Ballad of J&O just isn't as good as HCTS and that why it stalled at No 8. Furthermore, HCTS's optimistic tone would have been well received in the depressing America of 1969 and gone straight to #1.

 

I don't see how you could have smoothly dropped the pre-vocal guitar. There's no really good edit point, and you would save only a few seconds at best even if there were one. You certainly could not have started it cold with the vocal; that would be way too abrupt.

As I said in an earlier post, I really can hear that iconic intro coming out of the top-of-the-hour ID on a Top 40 station, and that's my main "hit" criteria. And really, it's no "quieter" than the piano intro to "Let It Be."

 

Really - and how many different "tops" do you think the chart has?

"Top" of the chart means the peak/summit of the chart.

How many different peaks/summits does Mount Everest have?

If you said "near the top of the charts" that would have been fine - but you DIDN'T, did you?

 

A mountain can stand alone or be part of a compact group of mountains, called a massif. Mount Everest is part of a massif together with Lhotse and Nuptse. A peak is a high point and is often pointy in shape. A mountain can have several peaks, but only the highest point of the mountain - the very top - is called the summit.

Moving past your attempt to make a point, the fact remains that I believe that that HCTS would have been a number 1 hit in the US in 1969. It has all the necessary ingredients to be a hit such as an easily identifiable and memorable opening riff, car loads full of vocal and musical hooks and all the other motifs associated with a hit song, as well as being a socially relevant song in that it would have struck a chord with the American public in a such depressing and far from optimistic time in the history of young Americans. No 1 with a bullet. So try again.

 

Try WHAT again? YOU asked a question about which Beatles songs "failed to top the charts" in 1969 and I answered it, and then you made up some weird nonsensical and incorrect point about how "topping the chart" DOESN'T mean #1, and now you've made up some other weird point/geography lesson pretending that I never used the word summit (I used BOTH words if you reread what I wrote it was in fact "THE peak/summit" but I suppose if you're willing to change the meaning of the phrase "top the charts" then hey why not also claim that I never used a word (summit) that I DID use, right?

Its also weird that you think you're what - smarter than me because of your "mountain knowledge? Well firstly this isnt a geography/geology/topography forum - its a music forum, and I was smart enough to think to use google to look up what the chart positions of the Beatles singles released in 1969 were, so....

.....and as far as the rest of your "blah blah blah" - where exactly did I say the song wasn't good enough to be a number one? I said (in this thread but never in any direct conversation with you) that the CIRCUMSTANCE of it being pulled as the second single off a pre-existing album, when the first single from a pre-existing album failed to "summit" the chart in the UK (and arguably in the US as well) would most likely have prevented it from "summiting" the chart.

I'd imagine that's why the neither the Beatles (nor almost anyone else) ever pulled a single from a pre-existing album in the 1960s in the UK, because that would risk hurting its chart prospects since people who already had the album would have no desire to purchase the single, which would be the likely reason Something/Come Together was their lowest charting single in the UK since their debut single 'Love Me Do' seven years earlier when they were anything but superstars.

It may have made #1 in the US (depending on how strong the B-Side was if it was released after the Billboard charts started combining both sides of a single for a shared placement, as even a B-Side earning a relatively low chart position on its own could significantly boost the single to a higher position than the A-Side would earn on its own.

Lets say for example before Billboard combined sides of a single in late 69 that the A-Side made #5, and the B-Side made I dunno for example lets say US #35 which is actually what the B-side of 'Get Back' "summited" at in the spring of 69, then the combined position after Billboard changed their rules (combining both sides of a single) in late 69 could have amounted to a number one position for a pairing of "Here Comes The Sun b/w ? - what its backed with matters because 'Here Comes The Sun' might not earn enough chart points on its own to make #1 and may need to rely on it's B-Side's performance chart points to boost it to the "summit" in a combined listing, like was the case with Something/Come Together - neither of which "summited" the chart on its own but did once combined after the Billboard rule change...

Anyway, do you have any more chart position questions you want to ask that you could just as easily look up yourself on Google?