Honestly, in life, I am a little bit of a trouble maker.
This fact may or may not surprise you depending on if and how we know each other.
Hopefully, you are the kind of person who would say if someone told you that I was a troublemaker, “No, not that Katie. She’s a nice girl. She’s a good person”
And I am.
I am a nice girl.. .a good person. . . most of the time.
But also, sometimes I like to start things.
For example, I like to say or do things that throw people for a bit of a loop.
I might make an edgy joke here or a snarky remark there. Once in college, I was cited for painting fire hydrants on my college’s campus because I chose to participate in an artistic prank at the behest of a friend. Needless to say, it was not my best decision.
Mostly, though I exhibit my mischievous side in more benign ways.
For example, I like to play the devil’s advocate in conversations.
Why do I do this? I sometimes ask myself.
Maybe I do these things because I am a middle child. Maybe I do these things because I was never a cool kid in school. Maybe I am rebelling against socially acceptable behavior. Who knows? We needn’t psychoanalyze me. All you need to know is that I am mostly nice but when the mood strikes sometimes I like to be a little contrary.
Honestly, I think this puckish impulse is a bit of a pressure relief valve for me. Most of the time I am pretty well behaved and responsible, but sometimes I need to let off a little steam.
That’s when impish Katie comes out.
An exasperated, more people-pleasing friend once said to me “your impulse is to look at any situation and ask yourself how can I undermine it?”.
Ouch!
He was right though, I do like to stir things up sometimes.
For example, I like to play a game where I think of a question that I have been asked and try to figure out what would be the “worst” answer that I could give in response.
To clarify when I say the “worst answer”, what I mean is that I like to try to figure out what is the most socially unacceptable answer that I could give to a question.
I am not necessarily trying to figure out what the “worst” thing is, I am just trying to figure out what would be the worst answer. Those two things are sometimes the same, but often they aren’t.
I let my husband play my game sometimes too. He is not quite the contrarian that I am but I think that I bring something puckish out in him too. We have different approaches though.
For example, in figuring out the “worst answer” to a question such as, “Which Lord of the Rings Books or Movies Do You Like best?, he and I would go about it in different ways.
My “worst response” might be “Oh, you mean those books by C.S. Lewis?”
or
“Are you talking about those books that are kind of like Harry Potter but with gnomes?”
For me, it is fun to get the details somewhat wrong.
My husband thinks the “worst answer” a person could give to a favorite or best question is to say “What?” or “What’s that” or “I’ve never heard of that” or “Who”. Ignorance is the key for him.
[At this point, I feel like I should defend my spouse. It is all me. I am the curmudgeon. He just play along to appease me or maybe I bring out something a little devilish in him.]
Even so, if we put both of our strategies together and came up with something like:
“What? You mean to tell me that they adapted those Hobbit movies into a book?” could be a diabolical answer.
Another way I enjoy figuring out the worst answer, is to pick the weakest choice of the possible choices. For example, if somebody asked me what my favorite Harry Potter book was I could say Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, because nobody would pick the second book in the Harry Potter series as their favorite. (Take that Gilderoy Lockheart and Giant Spider).
There are only seven Harry Potter books though, so there aren’t that many possible choices.
That’s why I like to try to play this other game. I have been playing it for a while now.
I like to quantify the “worst answer” to the question, “What is Your Favorite Beatles song?
It’s a good exercise too because there are 213 Beatles songs, all with the possibility to be potential answers.
Also, I have found that I can forget all about the game and then be listening to the radio and hear a Beatles song and ask myself Is this song a good candidate for the “worst answer” to the question “What is Your Favorite Beatles Song?”
The origin of dissecting this question for me began when I was in college on a long drive with new-ish friends. An older friend asked me what my favorite Beatles song was. I told him it was “Norwegian Wood” because I had played it with my high school band.
My friend then told me his favorite Beatles song was “In My Life” and then he had a whole long speech about how he liked the sentiment in the song and found the lyrics resonant with his life experiences. He explained that he liked the idea that we meet lots of people in our lives and some friendships last a short time and others last forever.
A season after this conversation my friend married his fiancee. After this we lost touch. Maybe he was trying to remind me that he was engaged and off the market. Maybe he was trying to let me know that he was enjoying this short time together. I don’t know. I am pretty literal. Cryptic messages like that are sometimes lost on me. When he was done expounding, I thought to myself, “Good answer”. Later, when I was older, I thought, “That sounded a little rehearsed.”
I told him that I had not given much thought to the lyrics of “Norwegian Wood”, but I explained my connection to it through band practice. After he finished his answer, I felt a little self-conscious about my Beatles song choice. “Norwegian Wood ” is a song about a one night stand. I hadn’t given it much thought. We only played the music in the band, I wasn’t as well versed in its lyrics.
I feel less self-conscious of my pick now. Also as far as Beatles songs are concerned, “Norwegian Wood” is considered by critics to be one of their best. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the 83 on its list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2004.
Until my friend had asked me, I never gave much thought to the question of what my favorite Beatles song was. For most of my life, up until that point, I didn’t really have that much of a relationship with The Beatles. Perhaps unfairly, I felt a little duped by my friend because I didn’t have a pre rehearsed answer and my friend did.
Through the years, I have been asked by others what my favorite Beatles song is. Perhaps because of my first experience with the question, I always wonder what the asker is really asking.
One idea I have is that the question is a sort of litmus test to see what kind of person you are or what you value. The Beatles question helps people find common ground.
For example, if you mention that your favorite song is a Paul song and the other person likes Paul McCartney that is something you can bond over. It seems like drummers usually like Ringo Starr best. Idealists usually like John Lennon. Romantics like Paul McCartney. George Harrison enthusiasts are usually spiritual seekers or introverts.
Even if you have never seen the movie Yesterday, I am sure you understand just how universal The Beatles are. Most people on our planet have been exposed to their music. I estimate that if you asked the average person who lives almost anywhere on our planet, they could probably name at least ten Beatles songs. The Beatles have a large musical catalog and are considered by many sources for a number of years to have been “The Biggest Band in the World”.
Suffice to say, I do understand why people ask each other what their favorite Beatles song is. It is a way of connecting and understanding each other. However, I still like to play my little game.
Last fall, before I quit social media, I posted on Instagram about how I play this game. I had just heard the Beatles song “Please, Please Me” on the radio and it sounded kind of icky and out of touch so I thought that might be the worst answer to the Beatles question. So I posted about it. Nobody really liked my post or seemed to understand it.
One of my sisters, not long afterwards, told me her answer and asked me why I did this. She said, people are just asking this question to get to know each other better.
She is right too, for all the reasons I mentioned previously. I do get that.
Still, I feel like the question assumes certain things. It assumes that you listen to a certain type of music. It assumes that you have been exposed to The Beatles. It assumes that you have a personal connection to the music. To me, as time passes, people might have less of a connection with the Beatles’ music. I think it is going to reach a period of time when their music stops being relatable for younger generations.
But also . . .
The termagant (female curmudgeon) in me also just feels like people are just trying to judge my taste when they ask the question.
They probably are. I mean, I judge people when I learn about things that they like. I’m a hard J on the Myers-Briggs personality test after all.
But also . . .
The “nice girl” part of Katie knows that those things do not really matter much when I am figuring out how much I like somebody. Now that I am in my 40’s I know that a person’s character matters more to me than what “things” they like. I have many friends who like boy bands and it doesn’t mean anything about them other than they enjoy a certain type of music. I do not think less of them because of that. In fact, I love that they enjoy that type of music because it helps me to know that it is okay if I enjoy it too.
This is something that I wish I knew when I was younger. A teenagehood of reading teen magazines somehow convinced me that what I liked was more relevant than what I was like to be around. I probably would have been more successful in friendships if I had concentrated more on honing my interpersonal skills instead of trying to figure out what music or clothes were cool.
Deep down, I know all these things. After the Beatles question conversation with my sister last fall, it seemed like I had put the Beatles question to bed for myself.
Then the other day, I heard the song “Roll Over Beethoven” on the radio and at that moment it was the funniest answer that I could think of if someone asked me what my favorite Beatles song is. I laughed out loud in my car.
It is a fun song. It has a fun melody. It is catchy! It is a song that was the centerpiece of a PG rated family dog movie.
And yet, the topic of the song just sounded so trite; it is a song about how great they are. It is a song about hubris. But as I learned later, it is a song about Chuck Berry’s hubris because he is the one who wrote it and first recorded it. It is an homage to him.
And yet, I would not have learned that little factoid if I had not been paying attention to The Beatles music on the radio. What I am beginning to realize is that maybe my little game isn’t just about being a little snob. Maybe it is about play. Maybe it is about laughing sometimes for no reason. Maybe it is about finding an interesting way to pay attention to the world around me. Maybe I am not always the little jerk that I think that I am.
So just for fun, without any mean-spirit in my heart, here are some answers I have come up with for the question:
What is the Worst Answer to the Question “What is the Best Beatles Song?”
In My Opinion
(In No Particular Order)
- “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da because it doesn’t have many lyrics, just fun harmonizing. It is a fun song but people might think you are wifty if you pick this one.
- Paperback Writer This is a completely subjective choice. I just find the harmonizing in the introduction part of the song to sound like nails on a chalkboard to me.
- Roll Over Beethoven for the reasons I already mentioned. It’s a good song. I just think people might look at you funny if you said it was your favorite.
- Please Please Me. As mentioned previously,I do not think this song has aged well. Also it seems like it has a double meaning even if you don’t take it that way, it seems dated.
- Free As a Bird. This song was first released in 1995. It was a radio hit in 1995. If you said this people might think you have only ever been exposed to that one Beatles song.
- Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. I think people might think you are on drugs if you pick this one.
- Hard Day’s Night. It is catchy song but stays close to the surface. It isn’t much of a think piece. Maybe though, there is something I am not considering about this song. Maybe it has good drumming. I don’t know.
The good thing though, is that there are no wrong answers. Taste is subjective. Maybe playing the What’s the Wrong Answer Game isn’t something that jibes with you. I can understand that, it sounds a bit negative on the surface.
However, if it might be something that you might like, I do recommend playing it. It does help you to look more closely at the world. I do feel like my ears are more open to Beatles music since my friend asked me about my favorite song all those years ago.
In fact, my favorite Beatles song has changed over several times. Currently, I like “Here Comes the Sun Best”. Currently, I identify George Harrison as my favorite Beatle. I also like “All You Need Is Love” and adore the wedding scene in the movie Love Actually. In the past, I liked “Hey Jude” best and I considered Paul to be my favorite. I’ve also gone through a John Lennon phase where I listened to a lot of his solo music. I have never had a Ringo phase but anything is possible.
What is your favorite Beatles song? Do you play any games like the “Worst Choice for Favorite Beatles Song” game?
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