My favorite Beatles songs that no one else likes, part 1

I'm at the beginning of one of my periodic Beatles jags during which I play Beatles music 24/7--or, more precisely, for 45 out of the 45 minutes I hear music in an average day. I'm also in a list-making mood, which is not unusual, and I started thinking about making a list of my favorite Beatles songs. I found some lists online of every song the Beatles recorded, and, taking out the "non-canonical" songs from the Anthologies (like "What's the New Mary Jane"), bootlegs, and covers from live recordings, I wound up with a list of about 215 songs--I included B-sides and the two songs released as singles from the Anthologies. But rather than do a list of my all-time favorites, I decided to start by compiling a list of my favorite songs that never seem to get ranked by others as favorites, or the Beatles songs I like that others don't. They are:

1. "Blue Jay Way" (from Magical Mystery Tour)--I'm not necessarily a fan of George Harrison's Beatles songs; in fact, I've never really liked his biggest Beatles hit, "Something." But this bleak, dreamy, psychedelic song is one of my favorites. The surface narrative is that the singer is waiting on a foggy night in L.A. for some friends to show up at his house on Blue Jay Way, but they never arrive. In fact, that is the real-life inspiration for the song; Harrison was staying at a house on Blue Jay Way in Los Angeles, and Beatles press agent Derek Taylor, was supposed to stop by, but his plane was delayed and, while waiting for him, George wrote this, turning a prosaic event (or non-event) into a spooky song which seems to be about loneliness and paranoia. There are lots of little druggy touches: a plodding dirge-like rhythm, an organ line that weaves its way in and out of the thick, droning background, and a hypnotic chant at the end involving repetition of the simple line "Don't be long," but which ends up sounding like "Don't belong." As a kid, I took this to be a warning about conformity, though that seems an unintended meaning. Still, I love this weird, hazy song that starts with the line, "There's a fog upon L.A." and then proceeds to bring this uneasy fog to musical life.

2. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (from Abbey Road)--More foggy psychedelia, this time from John Lennon. Lyrically, nothing's happening: the singer wants the girl, and he wants her so bad it's driving him mad. The song starts as a regular rock song, then gets a shuffly syncopated beat, then goes back to a rock song, before heading off into a long droning instrumental ending section with chunky guitars and white noise which cuts off abruptly and ends side 1--side endings being something that most young people who grew up on CDs know nothing about. When I was a teenager, I'd listen to that ending in my room and spin myself around in circles; when the music suddenly stopped, I'd throw myself on the bed and lie there for a few minutes trying to stop the world from spinning. At the time, I guess I thought I was replicating a drug trip. I don't spin myself around nowadays, but I still like this disorienting song.

3. "Free As a Bird" (from Anthology 1)--This song, produced by Jeff Lynne with the Lennonless Beatles line-up of 1995, uses a John Lennon vocal from a demo he recorded in the late 70's. Because of the poor sound quality of the original recording, Lennon sounds, appropriately, like a disembodied spirit. The rest of the Beatles sound like the Beatles, though some fans dislike this song because they think it sounds more like Jeff Lynne (who produced it) than the Beatles. But Jeff Lynne's ELO always sounded like Beatlesque music produced with Phil Spector's Wall of Sound methods, so I think it it sounds perfect. When I first heard this, at the end of the first Beatles Anthology show, I was so blown away by it that I got a little teary and totally missed the very cool music video which accompanied it. This is so good, it makes we wish that Paul and George and Ringo had seen fit to record a whole album of new material.

Well, this was going to be a simple "1 through 10" list, but I'm running on as usual, so more later.