205: Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Album: Help!
Writer: Larry Williams
Singer: Lennon

Verdict: Help! is not the greatest album, but it’s solid and begins to show the promise that would come out in full force with Rubber Soul. The best part is that it ends with a huge fan favorite Yesterday. Oh wait. It doesn’t. It ends with this piece of garbage, a cover song no less. Which would be less a problem if it was stuck in the middle of the album, but it’s just so maddening sitting right there at the end. Ian MacDonald said this about the song: it’s “an unprepossessing shambles of ersatz hysteria and jumbled double-tracking.” I have no idea what that means, but I agree wholeheartedly. I regret ever listening to it and honestly I regret not ranking it lower in the countdown.

204: Mr. Moonlight

Album: Beatles for Sale
Writer: Roy Lee Johnson
Singer: Lennon

Verdict: Another cover. I don’t mind the chorus, but the verses are done in monotone. That’s how I tend to sing, too, but Lennon did it intentionally. On a similar countdown the writer listed this dead last.

203: Little Child

Album: With the Beatles
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Singer: Lennon/McCartney

Verdict: Even McCartney dismissed this as album filler. There’s not much else to say about it. I can see it perhaps being a decent live song, but it’s too unimaginative to work on an album.

207: Devil In Her Heart

Album: With the Beatles
Writer: Richard Drapkin
Singer: Harrison

Verdict: A reworking of the song “Devil in His Heart.” Another cover. Another yawner.

206: A Taste of Honey

Album: Please Please Me
Writer: Bobby Scott, Ric Marlow
Singer: McCartney

Verdict: Originally an instrumental written for a play of the same name, it won some Grammy awards. It was then given lyrics and covered many times during the 60’s. I remember reading somewhere that the band began to eventually loathe the song and would change the lyrics if it was part of the set, with the favorite being, “A Waste of Money!” I’d listen to that version.