Best Beatle?

Lowbrow Answer: Paul McCartney
What a toolbag. McCartney is responsible for all the dumb, poppy bullshit that the Beatles put out. You know the songs I'm talking about. It's all the ones with "love," "baby," or "your hand" in the title. And hey, people who keep trying to convince me that Wings is a good band; you're wrong. They blow. McCartney going from the Beatles to THAT is like Hugh Grant going from Elizabeth Hurley to this.

And what's with McCartney still playing? He's been at festivals all over the place and was even the headliner for Glastonbury in 2004. Dude, just quit. None of us twenty-somethings even know who you are. You're trying to get thousands of people to feel nostalgic about "Hey Jude," a song you wrote about twenty years before any of us were even born. Get off the stage, we want to see the Ting-Tings.


Middlebrow Answer: John Lennon
He's responsible for what are, in my opinion, the three most amazing songs in the Beatles catalog in "I am the Walrus," "A Day in the Life," and "Across the Universe." Plus his glasses are cool and his hair is sexy. He's like an English, musician, seventies version of Zac Efron. Dreamy.

Of course, all I really have to say to negate all of that are the words, "Yoko Ono." Come on, Lennon. Didn't you learn anything from World War II? What are you doing cavorting with the Japanese? You're a Beatle. You can have any girl you want, and you chose her? Seriously? That's like me having a whole library of good pornography and choosing to masturbate to golf instead; it's just not making the most of my options, ya know?


Highbrow Answer: George Harrison
Anybody who is good friends with the cast of Monty Python earns instant kudos. In particular, Harrison was close with Eric Idle. Here they are performing together. So, let's see. Your friends work in low-level white collar jobs, taking orders from wealthy, boring republicans and spending their weekends cheering for the Red Sox and doting on their future children, and his friends are comedy legends who pushed the boundaries of art and censorship and will be revered by the entertainment business FOREVER. Hmmm. Who wins....

Harrison is also basically responsible for introducing the world to the sitar. When travelling in India, he decided to contact Ravi Shankar to learn the instrument. Remember back in the day when young people actually devoted themselves to learning something hard instead of playing guitar hero all day and texting each other? Harrison wrote "Within You Without You" on the sitar, which went on the Sargent Pepper's album. Give it a listen; who knew a white guy could shred the sitar with such gusto?