The Beatles Bible

Written by Paul McCartney in India in 1968, ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ was an attempt at a ska-influenced recording, although the title phrase came from a Nigerian friend.

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Wikipedia

"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as "the White Album"). It was written by Paul McCartney[4][5][6] and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Following the …

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Perhaps I have a been a bit unfair to this upbeat, light-hearted Paul McCartney song from the White Album. The sax part is very nice. It’s a cheery song that ought to be uplifting, but to me it feels out of place on the White Album. It is intended to be ska/Caribbean flavoured, but to me it doesn’t really come off. Just my personal opinion but something about it strikes me as almost cringey – a most un-Beatle-like feeling.

Anyway, I love the Beatles, and in previous posts I already explained why I think that McCartney’s impulse to create story songs in different genres and styles (often chirpy or quirky) may have played an important role in the tension that underpinned the band’s collective genius.

More than anyone else McCartney understood creative productivity, and how to nurture it. As the band became more divided they had less enthusiasm for this, exerted less influence, and the results were correspondingly less convincing.

The other Beatles apparently resented the time spent on Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da (and later Maxwell’s Silver Hammer), and perhaps their contributions were less constructive than they would have been in earlier years.

My first experience of Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da was in the context of the Blue Album. My granny had these albums and I listened to the a lot growing up, and it’s worth saying a bit more about them.

The 1962-1966 (Red) and 1967-1970 (Blue) albums were more than compilation albums. They were an concise, concentrated and unanswerable tour-de-force statement in vinyl.

If you listen to these albums and don’t understand why the Beatles are the best selling band in history and the most influential recording artists of the 20th century, then nothing else is going to persuade you. The first three discs of this four disc collection are all killer, no filler.

Even the last disc which covers the White Album, Let it Be and Abbey Road is very, very strong indeed, but it does include a few slightly weaker songs, and the selection seems less focussed than for the earlier periods. Maybe there were still some politics around the choice of the later songs (this list having been drawn up by Allen Klein).

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da is one of those that doesn’t quite seem to reach the impossibly high standards of the rest of the collection. For example, we could have had Helter Skelter, The End, Julia, Because or I’ve Got A Feeling.

BTW if you haven’t yet listened the new 2023 versions of these albums are well worth revisiting. The new mixes of the Beatles early work on the Red Album are, in my view, a worthwhile improvement on what was possible with early 60s tech.