Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Which songs should be in The Beatles: Rock Band game? We can't let it be.

It's easy to talk trash about playing (or pretending to play) some of the greatest songs ever written on fake, plastic guitars plugged into a video game system.

But us un-elitists here at the Scene & Heard headquarters, are woefully below the hip standard when it comes to The Beatles: Rock Band game slated for release on PS3, Xbox360, and Wii September 9.

Do you really care if it's silly to play simulated music in front of a TV set? Shut up, because playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as a pixelated George Harrison will be the coolest thing to happen to video games since a stick figure jumped over alligators in Pitfall on the Atari. Besides, if you say you don't want to play Beatles music as a Beatle in a Beatles video game, you are lying to yourself (or you don't like their music, thus making you too weird to analyze anyway).

Though it's been announced that the game's developers, Apple Corps, Harmonix and MTV Games, have secured rights to at least 45 Beatles songs to use in the game, we haven't seen anything resembling a tracklist yet. But they have said the game will be a "visual and musical history" of the band. [source: Variety] And as Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones put it: “It will span samples of the whole catalog all the way through.”

Sounds to me like the game will take some cues from cover acts like Beatlemania Now who dress up and act out all the different phases of the group's storied career. From Liverpool, to Beatlemania's Invasion, to the costumes and drugs, to their greatest songs, to their demise.

That in mind, it's easy to come up with 45 songs that are LIKELY to be in the game. But bare in mind, this is only a wish list--nothing official. But if I were a master schemer in the MTV Games office, my tracklist would start by shaping up something like this for the game:

Period I/Mania (settings: Liverpool, Ed Sullivan show)
1. I Saw Her Standing There (big mistake if you don't start with this song)
2. I Feel Fine
3. Love Me Do
4. She Loves You (this will be such a great one to sing)
5. I Want To Hold Your Hand
6. Hard Day's Night
7. Eight Days A Week
8. Ticket To Ride
9. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
10. Help!

Period II/Getting Better (setting: America)
11. I've Just Seen A Face
12. Drive My Car (beep-beep! beep-beep! beep-beep!)
13. Taxman
14. I'm Only Sleeping
15. Doctor Robert
16. Got To Get You Into My Life
17. Paperback Writer
18. Day Tripper
19. We Can Work It Out
20. Yellow Submarine

Period III/We're On Drugs (settings: in respective movies, and trippy dream sequences)
21. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
22. With A Little Help From My Friends
23. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
24. It's Getting Better
25. Within You, Without You
26. I Am The Walrus
27. Hello, Goodbye
28. Strawberry Fields, Forever
29. Baby You're A Rich Man
30. All You Need Is Love (can we get some plastic violins and trumpets for this song?)

Period IV/Love & Revolution (settings: Abbey Road, more trippy sequences?)
31. Back In The USSR
32. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
33. Happiness Is A Warm Gun
34. Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
35. Helter Skelter
36. Revolution 9
37. I Want You (She's So Heavy)
38. Here Comes The Sun
39. Two Of Us
40. For You Blue

The End (setting: the record label rooftop show, obvy)
41. Get Back
42. Come Together
43. Hey Jude
44. Yes, the full on Abbey Road Medley (from "You Never Give Me Your Money" to "The End")
45. Let It be


...So whaddaya think? There are certainly some gems like "I Will," "Rocky Raccoon" "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yesterday" notably missing, but would they translate as well into a stand up and play with plastic controllers party game? Who am I to judge? You tell me, what classic Beatles tracks do you want to play in this upcoming game?

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