Today’s entry in the Beatles Song-A-Day blog is the first that reflects a reorganization of the underlying ratings.

I decided that it would be useful to treat some groups of closely-related songs as blocks where there ordering reflected the entire group rather than the rating of the underlying songs. I also took the opportunity to tweak the underpinning rating system which was already pretty arbitrary.

I might say a little more about this system later, but basically it has a couple of functions: i) to put the songs in some sort of sequence and ii) to remind me what I thought were the different strengths and weaknesses of the songs when I initially considered them all a few years ago. These “strengths” and “weaknesses” are specific technical or musical features that don’t always allow for a straightforward comparison between very different songs.

Prior to that I had also rated the songs in my mp3 collection using the built-in star rating system. These ratings didn’t quite cover all the songs and reflected my taste from probably around 20 years ago now.

For songs from 168 onwards I have modified the ranking to incorporate some influence of the “overall” ratings while still taking into account some specific technical and musical features I look for, and keeping songs that are very closely linked together in the ranking system.

Although the “overall” ratings were a bit out of date they did a nice job of capturing my inclination to listen to the songs, and I was able to tweak one or two of them, and add ratings for a few songs I’d previously missed. My taste has changed a bit. I used to have a strong preference for Lennon and psychedelic songs, but I’ve mellowed a bit and now appreciate McCartney and earlier/later phases of the Beatles’ career much more. Still some of my original biases may survive.

A nice thing about the “overall” ratings was that I could put on a shuffled list (including other artists) of maybe 4+ star songs and be confident that most songs would be pretty “good”. Many of the Beatles’ songs fell into the 4+ category, but not all by any means. But I think the main reason I like music (or any art/culture really) is because it can reflect the full range of experiences, emotions, thoughts etc. that humans go through, and can resonate in different ways at different times. Ultimately, there is no such thing as 4+ music, and even if there was, it would not be satisfying to listen to it all the time. Contrast and variety are a big part of what makes a given piece of music resonate with a given person at a given moment.