Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Romancing the Beatles by Milou Koenings


The Beatles posted a question on their Facebook page this month: If you could put a Beatles lyric on a billboard, which lyric would it be?
beatles billboard
The Beatles have been the soundtrack of my life since before I was born. My mom said she listened to only two songs, practically 24 hours a day, when she was pregnant with me. One of them was "Yellow Submarine."


(The other was by Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made for Walking" ‑ which may explain my obsession with country music, but should be reserved for another blog post.)

So you could say I imbibed the Beatles with my mother's milk.  It was pretty shocking to me when I visited my little sister in college and one of her roommates actually asked, "Who are the Beatles?" Really?  

Honestly, I think one of my BFFs of two decades only ever became friends with me because I once was within two meters of Paul McCartney. And in his field of vision. And he spoke to me (and everyone else in the place, but that includes me, right?) So that's almost like meeting him, isn't it?

Anyway, back to the Beatles question.  I saw it and noticed that there had already been 43,000 replies, so I was curious which song got the most votes. I figured there would be some top contenders: Let it be. All you need is love (which by the way is so not true... kindness, respect, thoughtfulness, loyalty...) Come together. Or even Help!

And sure enough, they were all there. "And in the end, the love you make is equal to the love you take" was also there a lot. And there were many, many political commentaries based on this lyric or that.

I can't say I read all 43,000 comments, but one entry surprised and delighted me. It is one of my favorites but I've always thought it's a bit obscure among all the famous Beatle songs. Yet as I was scrolling down the comments, people consistently kept choosing it. I'm not tallying the votes, but from what I could see, it would definitely come in among the top picks. It was this one:

billboard in my life i love you more
There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better ...
In my life I've loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new...
In my life I love you more

Putting something up on a billboard is the equivalent of shouting it to the world, so I felt so uplifted that so many people would choose to broadcast to their loved one how important they are to them. Far more than universal slogans or political comments, people voted for romancing their special one. 
Romance rules, yet again!

So ... which Beatles song would you pick?

Milou Koenings is a USA Today bestselling author. She writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with a happy ending bring more joy into the world and so make it a better place.






Her other Green Pines sweet romances, I Love You Three, The Kampala Peppermint Twist, Reclaiming Home, and Sweet Blizzard are available on AmazonAmazon.uk, iBooks, Nook, Kobo and all your favorite e-book retailers.

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12 comments:

  1. Milou,
    I am a Beatles lover. I like the early Beatles best...my sons prefer The White Album. When we were in England we visited Liverpool and loved it. Thanks for an interesting post.

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  2. Milou, "In my Life" is the song my son and I danced to at his wedding. Because my husband had died 1.5 years prior, the song lyrics meant something different to us than the Beatles probably had in mind.

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    1. Thank you for sharing such a personal memory, Magdalena. That's the beautiful mystery of music, isn't it - how it twines itself into each of our histories and means something unique to each of one of us. Then it really does become "our" song...

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  3. My son loves the Beatles. I still remember seeing on TV their first performance in the US. When we went to London, my son had to visit Abbey Lane and take a picture of him walking across the street that had been a famous shot of the Beatles doing the same. He was one of thousands that wrote on the wall outside their recording studio.

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  4. Such a fun post! Thanks for sharing, Milou!

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  5. The Beatles have so many great songs. One of my favorites is, "Here, There and Everywhere".

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  6. Milou, I don't know that I could choose just one. There are so many great Beatles songs. You might say my writing career started when my friends and I, who were all fanatic Beatles fan, wrote short stories about the Beatles and us and shared them with each other. That really dates me since you were in utero when I was writing those stories. :)

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    1. Wow - you invented fan fiction! That must have been so much fun! Do you still have any?

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  7. I've always found comfort in the line from "All You Need is Love": "There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be." Like the title, it isn't strictly true -- but sometimes it's reassuring to think I can't screw things up TOO bad!

    But as a billboard for these times, I'll go with, "Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend."

    Sure, it's still too easy ... but it's a good place to start!

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  8. WE can work it out--what our world needs to believe. I LOVED THE BEATLES!

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