Talk:List of songs recorded by the Beatles

Inclusion criteria

All songs appearing on an officially-released album (as determined by inclusion on Template:The Beatles albums), except the instrumental recordings written or arranged by George Martin primarily for film (such as those released on A Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine), shall be included on the list. A song which does not meet criterion 1 shall be included on the list, accompanied by appropriate citations, only if it was recorded between 1960 and 1970, inclusive, or between 1994 and 1996, inclusive, and satisfies one of the following requirements: The song was recorded during official studio time. The song was recorded as a demo intended for development into an official release by the Beatles, provided two or more members of the Beatles appear on the recording. The song was recorded as a demo intended for development into an official release by another artist, provided two or more members of the Beatles appear on the recording. No recording of the Quarrymen or of the individual solo members of the Beatles shall be considered for inclusion on the list unless such a recording meets criterion 1. A recording where two or more members of the Beatles appear in an endeavor separate from the band itself shall be noted in a separate section of the article. The inclusion of any other song on the list shall be accompanied by appropriate citations and shall be justified on the talk page for the list.

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I assume "My Bonnie" and other songs sung by and credited mainly to Tony Sheridan have been left out because lead vocals are not by one of The Beatles, but (a) this is not made clear in the Notes and (b) in my opinion it's not consistent with the title of this page. I suggest including them. Beeflin (talk) 10:12, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Inappropriate variation from Lennon–McCartney credit

BeatlesLedTV: As you requested, I've been taking a look at the sources for the Demos section. I hadn't looked at this page too often before, but returning to it now I remember how, back in 2016 or thereabouts, I'd always meant to remove the specifics regarding songs credited to Lennon–McCartney. There are too many problems with the "Lennon" or "McCartney", "Lennon, with McCartney", "McCartney, with Lennon" approach, and I don't believe any other list on Wikipedia would enter into such distinctions and ignore the formal credits. More than anything, it shows a bias towards particular sources, eg McCartney's recollections in his book with Miles (a friend and longtime supporter of McCartney's), Many Years from Now, over Lennon's. Not that these credits are actually sourced right now, I notice – the references containing original LP liner notes certainly don't support any deviation from "Lennon–McCartney".

I've been looking back through the article history and the talk page archives to see how this approach came about. Seems to have started in September 2007 when two lists were merged: List of Beatles songs by singer and List of Beatles songs written by Lennon/McCartney, the last of which carried the Lennon or McCartney, Lennon with McCartney etc distinctions. The editor introduced the "prototype" here, for songs beginning with E, and then added the rationale in the lead. I notice that the talk page was filled with queries regarding the songwriting attribution for particular Lennon–McCartney songs, which I'm not surprised about – because there are several possible versions for some compositions. Looking at the talk page from September '07, under the threads Clean-up per AfD, Author column, and Crediting Mal Evans, three other editors queried or attempted to undo this approach. I've read one editor saying, it's not as if the band members could agree about the history of their songs, yet here we are assigning variations on the formal Lennon–McCartney joint credit as if they're fact. (And the next talk page archive, from October '07–March '08, contains threads addressing, firstly, the apparent bias caused by adhering to McCartney/Miles' Many Years from Now, and then the so-called "Massive Lennon bias".)

Not only that, but if, say, McCartney's to receive a "with" credit for "Ticket to Ride" because Lennon said he came up with the drum pattern, where's the "with" credit for Harrison for his riff in "And I Love Her", which, McCartney has acknowledged, made the song and was something that he and Lennon would never have thought of? If Mike Love's mentioned under "Back in the U.S.S.R.", where's Donovan for his lyrical input on "Yellow Submarine"? Derek Taylor for the same on "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and "Savoy Truffle"? Harrison for the "Ah, look at all the lonely people" refrain on "Eleanor Rigby", Starr for his lyrical input on "Rigby", Lennon for same on "Piggies"? ... The list just goes on. And I know for a fact that most sources would take exception to McCartney being credited (when it comes to who genuinely wrote what) for "And Your Bird Can Sing", "Ticket to Ride", "Nowhere Man" – it's a case of McCartney claiming he had a hand in their writing, thirty years after the event.

Also, the only book that I've come across that actually comes up with such credits – that is, lists them with the song titles as we do (rather than just commenting in prose on the specifics within the standard Lennon–McCartney credit, song by song) – is by Todd Compton. He's described in his Wikipedia article as "an expert on the plural wives of the LDS Church founder, Joseph Smit", but he's no authority on the Beatles. His book might even be considered to be self-published, given that it was published by his company Pahreah Press.

I think, in keeping with all the other "songs recorded by" lists, we should stick with the formal credit each time. The inclusion of lead singer(s) for each song, especially from midway through the Beatles' career, gives some idea of the true or majority writer. In fact, we could add introductory text to state this. JG66 (talk) 13:25, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

JG66 Thanks for source checking that! I completely agree with you. I'm fine with just sticking to the formal credit, as I think it makes everything a whole lot easier. I wanna bring this up to featured status someday & I need all the help I can get. In terms of having a lead, I'm really stuck right now as I don't know how to start or what the scope of things should be. The Beatles' music over their career changed so frequently that I don't know if I should approach it album-by-album, as we did with George Harrison's list a while ago, or whether to approach it like List of songs recorded by Godflesh, which talks about a brief history then what their overall sound is. I'd love to know your idea of how it should be approached

I'll change the writer column to the appropriate credits, saying John Lennon and Paul McCartney rather than Lennon–McCartney, as it saves space and helps with having their full names; I'll also change Starr to Starkey and erase all the info in the lead about writers. Thanks very much for your input! BeatlesLedTV (talk) 18:48, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for removing the songwriting distinctions – that's a huge improvement and long overdue. I'd say the list has got some way to go before it's approaching featured status (although you're much more experienced in FL than I am), because so much is inadequately sourced right now. The original LP and single sleeves and credits, for instance, don't support the year of recording for each song; and throughout, the non-specific "MacDonald 2005" is given as a source for all lead vocals. Having had a skim-through of these lead vocal credits, I don't believe a lot of them match what MacDonald gives anyway.

I'll try to fix the vocal credits, particularly to ensure the list is consistent in its application of the term "Lead vocal(s)". For example, whereas the likes of "Any Time at All", "All Together Now" and "A Hard Day's Night" correctly list a singer followed by "(with [another singer])" – because those songs do feature a second lead vocalist, however briefly – the inclusion of a second ("with") vocalist for, say, "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Don't Let Me Down", "I Saw Her Standing There", "Maggie Mae" (and quite a few more) is wrong, imo, because those are examples of the song having a prominent harmony part, but not a second lead singer as such. On the other hand, "Free as a Bird" should give "Lennon (with McCartney and Harrison)", in line with those second/lesser lead examples such as "A Hard Day's Night".

I'm also confused about treatment for "Act Naturally" and "Yesterday". Their debut release in the US was on a 1965 single yet we're suggesting it was on a 1966 album. Compare that approach with, say, "Paperback Writer": that's listed as a 1966 non-album single, and its UK (Collection of Beatles Oldies) album debut is ignored, as is the US album debut, on 1970's Hey Jude. But I've just seen examples of a different approach: "Can't Buy Me Love"'s first US release of any sort was apparently in 1970, on Hey Jude ...

Sorry to be presenting you with more "homework" – again. I'll help where I can, although I am stretched pretty thin already. I haven't nominated anything for GA for what must be two years, because nowadays I tend to focus on several articles at once [or: I can't seem to maintain sufficient focus on one article at a time]. JG66 (talk) 05:24, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

JG66 Thanks very much I think it looks much better as well, and a lot less stressful. But yeah for the lead vocal col, I gave MacDonald 2005 as the primary source because he went through and gave personnel for everything, although I know there are other authors that have done the same; whoever they are, as I can't personally verify that info, should be added to the col. I also believed that having a reference for every single song would fill it with over 200 references, which to me seems like overkill. But, if it needs it to become featured, then that's what will have to be done. The col used to be way off track, having harmony vocals along with lead vocals, which I guess it still does in some cases, including the ones you mentioned (I recently added Yoko Ono to "Bungalow Bill", who was before not noted).

I separated the non-album singles from the albums because that's what they were originally released as. The list originally had "album debut" as the col, but I thought this would be much more appropriate. I've thought about mentioning all of the non-album singles' later release on Past Masters, since that is in the official core catalogue. With "Act Naturally" and "Yesterday", they were released as regular singles and not 'non-album' ones. I guess what I should do is make a separate symbol for non-album singles and make the entire release col about album releases. What do you think? And it's all good, I knew this list wouldn't be a main priority to you. I do appreciate all the help you've been giving me. :) BeatlesLedTV (talk) 18:11, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Update: JG66 I've gone and added references for lead vocals for almost every track, mainly personnel references from each individual article; most are from MacDonald 2005. However, there are a lot missing, which shows how unsourced some of the individual articles are. These I had to leave blank because I'm not going to go guessing what pages the personnels are on. I'd really appreciate a source check for the column, and possibly and clean up for all that's missing. I'd do it myself but I don't have the books and have no access to them. It might take quite a while, which sucks but it must be done eventually. It's mainly why I originally had just the vague overall book source at the top of the column, because I assumed that would be good enough, but probably not for featured status. Anyways, I'd really appreciate the help when you can, but again no rush. :) BeatlesLedTV (talk) 23:26, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Should US albums even be mentioned?

This page has come a long way from this. As I've been improving the page over the past couple months, I've kept the US releases in the table because that's how they were when I found it. I since made note of the non-album singles as just "non-album singles" but now, I've thought of something: Are the US releases even necessary? Besides the Magical Mystery Tour LP, most of the US albums aren't important to the "core catalogue", and many of them went out of print until most of them were remastered in the 2010s. But for this list, I feel it'd be better just to note the "core catalogue" releases, meaning the original UK albums, the US Magical Mystery Tour LP, and Past Masters (we could probably make note of the Red and Blue albums as well). Right now, the release column makes note of the original Parlophone/Apple and Capitol releases (along with Vee-Jay's Introducing... the Beatles) but I think only the core catalogue releases should be mentioned, and leave the US albums (other than MMT) for the discography page. I'm currently in the process of writing a lead for the list and having the US albums really messes with it. It'd be fine to note that many of their songs were released on separate albums in the UK and the US in it, but having the US releases in the table makes it a little excessive. I'd really like others' inputs on this, as I'd like all the help I can get to make it become featured. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 01:28, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

People from that period in the U.S. were forming their impression from the U.S. albums as to where the Beatles were headed musically. It would take some people many years to learn about the packaging of the original (British) albums, and this would shift their understanding especially of their music in 1965. Carlm0404 (talk) 19:39, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Sort order of songs in main table

After I use the "sort ascending" arrow to sort the songs in the main table, three songs appear at the bottom of the table below "Your Mother Should Know". The three songs are:

• "A Day in the Life"
• "The Fool on the Hill"
• "A Hard Day's Night"

I have looked at fixing this but I can't see where the problems are. Any thoughts? GTHO (talk) 01:27, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

GTHO Fixed, had to do with quotes inside the sort parameter. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. – zmbro _(talk) 02:56, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

German Language Versions

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere so sorry if it's been addressed. There are 2 songs included in the list that are German language localizations of originally English language songs. Should these be counted as their own category outside the 188 originals and 25 covers? (so 186 originals, 25 covers and 2 German language translated versions) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.58.47.62 (talk) 21:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

They are included in that count and are in the table. Those versions are not necessarily memorable in terms of the modern discography so they can be included in the original count. – zmbro _(talk) 22:42, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Should the songs featured in the Get Back Documentary be included?

I noticed that some songs from the 1970 Let It Be film (Namely Jazz Piano Song, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, and Suzy Parker) were included under the 'Other released songs' sections, so I was wondering if that means the songs from the Get Back Documentary should also be included.

The documentary features roughly seventy songs not on this wiki page, so I'm worried it would clutter the page. ItsMichaelRay (talk) 21:48, 15 August 2023 (UTC)