Beatles Songs Quiz
Thirty seven songs recorded in barely seven years by a band that changed what a pop record was allowed to be roughly every eighteen months. Knowing the eras is most of the game.
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Seven years, four distinct bands
The Beatles released their first single in 1962 and their last recorded album in 1970. That is a shorter working life than most bands spend on their first three records, and yet the catalogue in this set sounds like the work of several different groups, which is the single most useful thing to know when you are trying to place a track.
The early period, through 1964, is compact guitar pop built for singles and live performance: She Loves You, A Hard Day's Night, Eight Days a Week. The middle period, 1965 to 1966, brings in outside instrumentation and much more ambitious writing: Yesterday, Nowhere Man, In My Life, Eleanor Rigby, Michelle. Then comes the studio period, from 1966, when the band stopped touring and started using the recording process as an instrument: Tomorrow Never Knows, Penny Lane, A Day in the Life, I Am the Walrus. Finally the late period, 1968 to 1970, is looser, more fragmented and often closer to four solo writers sharing a studio: Blackbird, Revolution, Come Together, Get Back, Something, Here Comes the Sun.
Lennon and McCartney did not write everything they are credited with. The two agreed early on that all their songs would carry a joint credit regardless of who actually wrote them, which is why the credit tells you almost nothing about authorship. Yesterday is McCartney’s, and he recorded it essentially alone with a string quartet. Something and Here Comes the Sun are George Harrison’s. Octopus’s Garden is Ringo Starr’s. The joint credit is a contract, not a description.
The tracks that were not really band performances
| Song | Year | What is unusual about the recording |
|---|---|---|
| Yesterday | 1965 | McCartney with a string quartet; no other Beatle plays on it |
| Eleanor Rigby | 1966 | Scored for a string octet; no Beatle plays an instrument on the track |
| Tomorrow Never Knows | 1966 | Built on prepared tape loops and a single sustained chord |
| A Day in the Life | 1967 | Two separate song fragments joined by a full orchestral crescendo |
| Blackbird | 1968 | One voice, one acoustic guitar, and a metronomic tapping sound |
Those five are worth knowing individually because they are the ones most often used as questions in any Beatles quiz, and because the recording facts give you a hook that has nothing to do with remembering the track itself.
The Abbey Road medley
Three entries in this set, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End, are not standalone songs in the ordinary sense. They are consecutive parts of the long medley that closes side two of Abbey Road in 1969, assembled largely from unfinished fragments and running together without gaps. The End contains the only drum solo Ringo Starr recorded with the band, which he reportedly had to be talked into.
If a question offers you two of those three as options, you are being asked to distinguish between adjacent minutes of the same continuous piece of music, which is about as hard as this game gets.
Two records the catalogue holds
Yesterday is generally described as the most covered song in popular music, with cover versions numbering in the thousands. It is also, on the arithmetic above, barely a Beatles recording at all.
Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were released together in 1967 as a double A-side single, meaning neither was designated the B-side. Both were originally intended for the album that became Sgt. Pepper and were pulled to satisfy demand for a single, which the producer George Martin later called the biggest mistake of his professional life.
Playing the set
Thirty seven questions drawn from across the catalogue. If you can place a track in one of the four periods described above, you have usually eliminated two of the four options before thinking about the song at all, because the wrong answers are drawn from the same catalogue and therefore from a range of eras. Era first, title second: that ordering is worth several points a round.
Frequently asked questions
Why are Beatles songs credited to Lennon and McCartney even when one wrote them alone?
The two agreed early that all their songs would carry a joint credit regardless of authorship. It is a contractual arrangement, not a description, which is why the credit tells you almost nothing about who actually wrote a given song.
Which Beatles songs did George Harrison write?
In this set, Something and Here Comes the Sun are his. Ringo Starr wrote Octopus’s Garden. Both are credited under their own names rather than to Lennon and McCartney.
Are Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight separate songs?
They are consecutive parts of the medley that closes side two of Abbey Road, running together without gaps. The End follows them and contains the only drum solo Ringo Starr recorded with the band.
How many Beatles songs are in this set?
Thirty seven, spanning the 1963 singles through to the 1969 and 1970 recordings. A round draws ten of them at random.
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