Beatlemania redux

I watched the Tribute show last night on CBS and was mostly amused by it. I don’t doubt all those musicians who were at the Grammys and stayed over a day to perform on this show truly do admire and respect The Beatles, but they mostly did mediocre-to-bad cover versions of Beatle songs. They tried hard, I’m sure, and nobody can replace the original group, but they just weren’t very good.

In fact, the best thing about the show was the appearance of the two survivors, Paul and Ringo. They looked like they were having nearly as much fun fifty years later as they had the first time on that stage.

One Comment

  1. I totally agree about the “mediocre-to-bad” nature of most of the tribute songs.
    I was particularly disappointed in Katy Perry, Brad Paisley and Maroon Five, all of whom I like when they’re doing their own stuff, but they seemed to fall flat last night. I think they might have done better if they weren’t trying to be so respectful to the original versions but instead gave them a fresh take. (Katy Perry could’ve done great dressed as Lovely Rita or Lucy in the Sky instead of a flowery mumu that made her look pregnant. And if she had added her own arrangement and choreography, so much the better.
    The opposite was true of Imagine Dragons, which did try to do its own take, but which didn’t hit it and sometimes seemed to be off-key. I like their own songs a lot, but they weren’t much more than a Las Vegas cover band until about a year and a half ago, so maybe they haven’t yet hit their stride.
    Also, it was great to see the Eurythmics together again, but Annie Lennox at 59 unfortunately doesn’t have the voice that Paul and Ringo have in their early 70s.
    On the other hand, I did think Keith Urban did well in his duet with John Mayer (not so great) and that the guitar playing on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by whoever did it (I didn’t recognized either artist) was terrific. John Legend also did very good in his duet with Alicia Keys, who could’ve benefited by toning it down just a tad.
    The best of the tributes came from Stevie Wonder, who took “We Can Work It Out” and OWNED it. He can still belt it out at age 63.
    And like you say, it was fantastic to see Paul and Ringo on stage together, with George Harrison’s son backing them up, who seemed to have inherited a lot from his dad. It’s too bad Julian Lennon wasn’t there, but I’m not sure how well he gets along with Yoko Ono.
    Speaking of Yoko, my wife found it interesting that she and George’s widow were sitting separately from Paul and Ringo. Maybe there was a logical reason for that, but I’m sure it wasn’t that they had any problem with George’s widow.
    It was kinda sad to see Yoko stumbling and nearly falling to the floor as she tried to dance to one of the songs. Mercifully, the camera only caught it for a split second, but I wonder why they even aired that clip at all.

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