The Beatles first gained popularity with their short and sweet pop songs. The longest songs of their career displayed their long-form creativity. So did their short tunes. Seven of the shortest Beatles songs clocked in at less than 90 seconds. Let’s look at them from worst to best.
Note: We include only songs that appeared on their studio albums from 1963 to 1970, and we used a firm cut-off. “Golden Slumbers” at 1:31 is too long to include on our list.
7. ‘Wild Honey Pie’
Annoyingly terrible on every level. “Wild Honey Pie” contained half-baked musical ideas (a seemingly out-of-tune guitar with a basic descending chord structure) and overly repetitive lyrics (“Honey pie” gratingly sung repeatedly until the last line, which seems like it takes forever to arrive).
The Beatles stuffed one of the worst White Album songs between the far more melodic and fully-realized “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” as if we wouldn’t notice, but it’s hard to overlook this genuinely awful song.
6. ‘Maggie Mae’
It could have been a solid country-style Beatles song if only they had bothered to flesh it out. The mere snippet from Let It Be showed promise, but one of the least fulfilling short Fab Four songs if only because it showed promise.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr shared songwriting credits on the tune, which was something of a Liverpool folk song about a prostitute robbing a sailor coming home from a journey. The second-shortest Beatles song by length could have been so much more, and John made the attempt. He reportedly recorded a demo of the song in 1979.
5. ‘Her Majesty’
A throwaway if ever there was one. The Beatles cut it from the Abbey Road medley, but it magically appeared after “The End” because an Abbey Road Studios tech didn’t want to break the rules about wasting tape. He stuck it at the end of the master, and it remained there for posterity.
The song seemed like an insult to Queen Elizabeth II, though Paul later said it was nothing more than a cheeky and irreverent experimental track. We believe it.
4. ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’
The John-driven tune has its moments musically, but that’s not enough to save the song that sits in the middle of Abbey Road’s Side 2 medley. He channeled Paul’s ability in creating a tune about a colorful fictional character, and he included some vivid lyrical imagery (“Shaves in the dark to save some paper;” “Keeps a 10-bob note up his nose”).
Read Related Also: Florence Pugh ‘Learnt a Lot’ From Her ‘Dune 2’ Co-Stars: ‘They’re Sparkly People’
Paul’s filet mignon-thick bass riff and a jaunty piano line are worth hearing, but John’s vocals cover them up for most of the song. On the plus side, it segues perfectly into another of The Beatles’ shortest songs, which we’ll get to in a moment.
3. ‘Dig It’
Another Let It Be snippet that at least provided us an excellent idea of what the full version sounded like. The Beatles dropped listeners into the middle of “Dig It” on the original album version.
We had to wait decades to hear a version (on the 2021 super deluxe Let It Be reissue) that lasted longer than a minute. Still, the 4:09-long Glyn Johns mix was trimmed down from more than 12 minutes. The 50 seconds we heard on the original album in 1970 gave us a satisfying taste of John’s Bob Dylan-like stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach over a shambolic jam featuring Billy Preston’s warm Hammond organ.
2. ‘Polythene Pam’
Two of The Beatles’ shortest songs came back-to-back on Abbey Road. The previously mentioned “Mean Mr. Mustard” led into John’s “Polythene Pam.” He changed the name of Mr. Mustard’s sister from Shirley to Pam to make the segue more complete, per The Beatles Lyrics editor Hunter Davies.
Ringo loved the Abbey Road sessions because of his drum playing and sound, and “Polythene Pam” offered a showcase of tom-heavy, almost tribal drumming. George pops in with some nifty slide guitar work, and John’s powerful 12-string guitar playing gives the song an aggressive edge. It’s one of The Beatles’ shortest songs, but it included some refined ideas and strong musicianship in its 72 seconds.
1. ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)’
The Fab Four spent months fine-tuning every second of Sgt. Pepper. So it’s almost novel that they knocked out this song in one recording session (albeit one that lasted nearly 12 hours). The brief “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” offered a sped-up, harder-rocking take on the song that opened the album.
George and Ringo said making the album was boring. Ringo because he most sat waiting to be called in to play, and George because he disliked the cut-and-stitch approach. Still, it sounds like Ringo had some laying down the heavy bass drum, and George put down a scorching guitar track.
The “Sgt. Pepper’s (Reprise)” might have been an afterthought, but it was also the best of the Beatles’ short songs and one of the few that predated Abbey Road and Let It Be.
For more on the entertainment world and exclusive interviews, subscribe to Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s YouTube channel.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘
fbq(‘init’, ‘1931209583834020’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
