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The Beatles: "Birthday"
Similar to my post of September 20, it’s a birthday song today, this time for the older of my two sons. As I noted then, I’m only going to do these this year — I don’t really know if I could keep coming up with birthday songs that really qualify as “great” songs worthy of being Reselected.
In any case, this time I’m doing one of the most obvious rock ‘n’ roll birthday songs, The Beatles’ “Birthday,” released in 1968 on The Beatles (aka The White Album). It’s a great Paul McCartney rocker, despite the fact that John Lennon later said that he thought it was “garbage.” (Certainly, it is a bit of a throwaway song for Paul — he was clearly capable of much more in the way of creativity. But John was also a bit cranky when it came to assessing Paul’s Beatles work in interviews during the first several years post-breakup, so I tend not to give too much credence to such proclamations.) Along with “Helter Skelter” and “Back in the USSR,” it was one of Paul’s songs on The White Album intended to prove to potential doubters that he was still fully capable of rocking out. And as contrived as it may be in that sense, it works: the song does indeed rock. And without any sort of research to prove as much, I’m guessing it’s now the second-most commonly played song to mark a person's birthday. (Note, however, that I don’t say “second-most commonly sung song" — it’s pretty hard to sing this and make it sound halfway decent. Then again, the same could be said for good ol’ “Happy Birthday,” what with all the off-key singing it typically inspires.)
Original post date: November 1, 2011