173. Birthday
Imagine writing and recording a song in a single afternoon and then have people listen to it hundreds of millions of times
For the Greatest Rock Band (TM) in history, the supply of Beatles guitar riffs is surprisingly limited. They did plenty of interesting stuff with the guitars, of course. But compared to some of their contemporaries, who regularly built whole songs around killer riffs, there’s just almost nothing like that in the Beatles catalog. Their genius was far more often in strange chord progressions and intricate melodic developments within a frame (i.e. Here Comes the Sun or Blackbird). Or even just down to the actual sound they were able to magic from the instrument. Frankly, I’m not sure I could even construct a top 10 list of their great guitar riffs.1
Which makes Birthday an interesting exception to the rule, since there’s not really much to this song except the core riff. Some hyped-up drumming (which sounds incredible), some aggressively nonsensical lyrics, and not much else. That makes sense, though, since the song was written and recorded all in the space of a single day.
That kind of pacing doesn’t leave a lot of room for conceptual development. I mean:
You say it’s your birthday (okay, good start)
Well, it’s my birthday too, yeah (wait, what?)
They say it’s your birthday (yeah, we got that already)
We’re gonna have a good time (okay, fair enough if we’re doing a double-party I guess)
I’m glad it’s your birthday (thanks?)
Happy birthday to you (always close on a strong note)
Still, the hours that they weren’t using to refine the lyrics do seem to have been well-spent. Because even in a song this simple, there are still a few moments of compositional brilliance. For example, check out the section that connects the first verse and the bridge (the ‘yes we’re going to a party party’ bit). Everything else drops out and it’s just Ringo’s thumping beat and then you get the guitars back turned up to 11, and it feels like a space launch when they fire the booster rockets.
I can’t fully get behind Alan Pollack’s take on the song as an “act of spontaneous effusion” that marks “the genius of Macca, circa 1968.”2 But I do get where he’s coming from. It really is astonishing that they could fully invent and then create a song this good in a literal single day (and they took a long break to go watch a movie in the middle). It’ll never be one of my favorites, but the riff is more than enough to pull me in, and I still find new little bits to appreciate even after all these years.
Let’s try. Off the top of my head there’s Day Tripper, I Feel Fine, Birthday, And Your Bird Can Sing. And….Ticket to Ride? I Want You (She’s So Heavy)? I don’t know, I’m already getting into stuff where it’s not really about the riff but about what they’re doing with it.
See, for example:
If you make the effort on your own to map out how the rest of the percussion effects are worked into the piece, you’ll find the texture of each section of the song has been carefully and neatly planned out. The point being that even in a song like “Birthday” which we know was worked up very quickly, and where a certain informal, “come as you are” feeling permeates right to the core of the piece, still, nothing is left to chance. This of course is a hot button for those who like to rag on Paul for being such a control freak, but in my humble opinion, it’s this attention to detail that elevates a good rock song to the level of a gem.