5 Songs to Get You Through the Week #38

5 Songs to Get You Through the Week is a feature I run on Young Ears, Fresh Perspective on Sundays/early hours of Monday morning where I pick out 5 tunes that I think are notable and tell you a bit about them. The point is to give you some rocking music to help you deal with your weekday blues. You can either listen to one each day, listen to them all at once, or any other combination that you feel. As long as you can get through the week without the man getting you down, that's all I care about. Without further ado, here are the 5 tracks I've picked out for this week:

1. Back in the USSR, by The Beatles

This fun guitar and piano driven tune was put out in 1968 on The White Album as a way for The Beatles to poke a bit of fun at The Beach Boys. Instead of singing about the USA or California girls though, they sing about being back in the Soviet Union and how the Ukraine girls really knock them out. Given the time this song came out in it's pretty amusing and yet at the same time really fun to groove and jam out to.

2. Hey Jude, by The Beatles

This song was originally written by Paul McCartney as Hey Jules and was meant to be a song to cheer up John Lennon's young son Julien Lennon during his parents' divorce. McCartney and Julien were very close while Julien was growing up, so it is kind of natural that McCartney would want to do something to help him feel at least a little better during such a difficult time in his life. Indeed it is a cheerful and fun song; especially in the ending that goes on for over four minutes.

3. Taxman, by The Beatles

This is one of the funkier songs The Beatles wrote; especially if you listen to McCartney's bass line. If you like songs that protest against overly heavy taxation from rich government fat cats then this is the tune for you. In a way it's a pretty depressing song despite its upbeat nature, but then again they wouldn't really get the message across if they were to be all nice about things. Nothing gets done by always being polite.

4. Come Together, by The Beatles

This song was originally written by John Lennon when asked by Timothy Leary to write a campaign song for him. The idea "come together" was one Leary came up with. Lennon tried to work with it, but couldn't think of anything. It didn't matter anyway because Leary was soon jailed for pot possession. The song itself then came to life from a bunch of "gobbledegook" thing the band came up with in the studio according to Lennon.

5. We Can Work It Out, by The Beatles

A Beatles song about love and relationships? Whoever would have imagined such a thing would exist? This is a fun uptempo song about trying to salvage a relationship that seems to be falling apart. It emphasizes that life is too short to fight with each other. Love is all that really matters so we really should try to get along. One of the more interesting parts is the waltzy parts that break up the choruses. Some of George Harrison's more clever thinking right there.