Most of The Beatles’ greatest songs have been held up as untouchable in the rock field. For every pop marvel like ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ or ‘Hey Jude’, there are more experimental tracks like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ that saw them pushing the boundaries for what rock and roll could do. Although the band could turn many of their best ideas into solid gold, John Lennon was usually the first to admit when they missed the mark.
Since the band’s breakup, Lennon would spend most of the time slagging off different Beatles songs that he believed were below par. Although many of his least favourite songs from the group came from his writing partner, Paul McCartney, Lennon could be just as cutthroat when talking about his masterpieces.
When discussing the band’s early material, Lennon often said that he never felt personally connected with any of his songs, feeling that he was just writing songs for the meat market rather than anything substantial. By the time he started to become more honest with songs like ‘Help!’, Lennon had drastically changed his approach to songwriting, often working on various tracks that were an extension of his personality.
Even though these tracks gave way to wild experiments, Lennon was still unsatisfied with how many of them turned out. Despite the massive landmarks that came with a song like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, for instance, Lennon thought that it would have been better to scrap the entire Beatles catalogue so that he could record them over again.
After Lennon’s tragic murder in 1980, a Beatles reunion would become impossible until the 1990s, a time when the remaining band members got together to record two new songs for the Anthology project. Compared to the standard greatest-hits collections, fans also got a taste of never-before-heard songs, from the band’s catalogue, including different takes of classic songs as well as discarded tracks as well.
Among the new tracks was a song called ‘That Means A Lot’, written around when the band made the film Help! Although this style of pop song was usually a walk in the park for The Beatles, Lennon admitted that the song was ruined by the band putting their signature touch on it.
When asked about the song, Lennon later admitted, “The song is a ballad which Paul and I wrote for the film, but we found we just couldn’t sing it. We made a hash of it, so we thought we’d better give it to someone who could do it well”. Despite not using the song, the band did work at the studio to refine it, running through upwards of 20 takes and even flirting with performing a countrified version of the track.
While even McCartney would say that the song was nothing special, it’s still a lovely ballad from the time, feeling like a hybrid of the caustic sounds of ‘Ticket to Ride’ and McCartney’s more saccharine ballads. Even though The Beatles could sense when a track wasn’t working, it’s a testament to their quality control that even their less-than-stellar material still sounded this good.
