Inspired by The Beatles

I'm going to start doing occasional posts focused on songs that strongly bear the Beatles' influence. They're great in number and many are superb tunes in their own right. They don't need to be directly linked to one specific song (like the Vines' "Factory" which strongly smacks of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by way of Nirvana on a mediocre day). Some might be more traceable to an era of the Beatles or a certain album. "White Album pop" isn't an atypical phrase to come across in a music review (though one must ask how it's possible to isolate the essence of that wild madhouse of a record). Others might seem inspired by one of the Beatles in particular (Paul with his whimsical and often precious style that John derided as "granny-music" or George with his Eastern-influenced work, etc, etc). As is obvious, the Beatles cast an immensely large shadow over all of pop music.

The first entry is Franz Ferdinand's "Eleanor Put Your Boots On" from their excellent 2005 album You Could Have It So Much Better. It's a lilting, winsome, and lightly melancholic ballad that is Paul McCartney through and through. And I promise that the connection is not so spurious as to be based solely on the fact that Macca wrote "Eleanor Rigby."

Enjoy Franz. They rule.



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