Why I've Never Bought a Beatles Album

I am currently on holiday in Merseyside. Over the past few days, I've visited such five-star local attractions as Chester Zoo, the Tate Gallery, and the Picton Reading Room.

I also went to the Museum of Liverpool, which served as a stark reminder of just how much this city loves The Beatles. There was a whole exhibit dedicated to John, Paul, George and Ringo, and while it was very informative, I can't help but feel that I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I was, y'know, a Beatles fan.

Depending on how you count 'em, The Fab Four's back catalogue consists of anything from 11 to 24 studio albums, and I own precisely zero of them. It's not that I dislike their music; I simply never felt that it was especially worth adding to my collection. As Liverpudlian bands go, I always preferred Echo & The Bunnymen.

Your Favourite Covers

In case the whole 69 Love Songs thing hasn't made it clear, I'm a big fan of cover songs. Actually, I'll amend that: I'm a big fan of cover songs IF they do something new with the source material. Playing a note-for-note cover can be fun at live shows, but there's really no need to record it unless you're bringing something original to the table.

For the last couple of days, I've been asking people on Twitter and Facebook what they consider to be the best cover of all time. Here are 20 of the songs that were suggested - let's see how inventive these reinventions are, shall we?

I'm Shakin' by Jack White
Original Artist: Little Willie John

Suggested by Amy Wise

Reinvention Rating: 2/5 - Jack adds a whole lot of attitude and (if I'm not mistaken) a couple of extra verses, but in spite of the added vim and vigour, it's still essentially the same track.

In Search of The 21st Century Beatles

Big news! Chris Martin likes One Direction and, judging by the comments on NME.com, people aren't best pleased:

Now, I've already documented my viewpoint on matters like this, and when I was brainstorming ideas for today's blog post, I considered straight-up trolling the 'but they don't even write their own songs!' camp. I very nearly wrote an evil little thing about how One Direction are basically the same as The Beatles - something tailor-made to get The Gatekeepers of Musical Authenticity all riled up.

I eventually decided that 'Are One Direction The New Beatles?' wasn't an article I wanted to write, but I still see plenty of similarities between the two acts. I'm sure that many other people have made this point, but for all of their envelope-pushing, The Beatles had obsessive fans, feature films, and loads of hits, just like 1D.