Beatles News
There are almost certainly worse holiday songs than Paul McCartney's 1979 "Wonderful Christmastime." But in a genre famous for cheesiness, it stands out as among the most polarizing. And it's notable for being written by the same Beatle who penned "Let It Be" on the band's final album.
The song? You know the one where McCartney sings "Simply having a wonderful Christmastime" a dozen times while a chorus of children chime in with "Ding dong, ding dong …" In the 46 years since it was released, it has become a seasonal staple — in inescapable rotation on radio, department store elevator music and streaming services.
For some, it's charming and joyful. For many others, it's hackneyed and repetitive. The vitriol against "Wonderful Christmastime" routinely lands it on perennial lists of the worst Christmas songs.
NPR Music's Stephen Thompson learned to abhor the song while working as a stocker at a grocery store in Iola, Wis., in the late 1980s.
"I hate that song," he says. It seemed to play nonstop for the whole of December, he recalls. "It's this insistent, tinny little synth-pop earworm that once it gets that hook under your skin, you can't shake it. And not in a good way."
"Paul McCartney did not try very hard to come up with a unique sentiment," he adds. "It's just this kind of cheerful trifle." Ted Montgomery is the author of The Paul McCartney Catalog and The Beatles Through Headphones. "The bar is so high with McCartney because he's such a great songwriter," he says. "We don't need to list all the classic songs he's written."
But just for fun, let's: As a member of the Fab Four, McCartney composed enduring classics such as "Eleanor Rigby" and "The Long and Winding Road." In his post-Beatles days, he produced songs such as "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "With a Little Luck." It would be difficult to find a bigger McCartney fan than Montgomery, even for him though, "Wonderful Christmastime" is a bridge too far.
"The greatest thing about this song is they only play it between Thanksgiving and Christmas," he says. In Catalog, his take is even harsher: the instrumentation is "amateurish and banal" and the lyrics "embarrassing," he writes. One of Montgomery's biggest gripes is "it's all synth."
In 1979, the versatile Yamaha CS-80 had just come out. Although the synthesizer — an electronic instrument that combines sound waves to create music — wasn't new in the pop world, the Yamaha quickly caught on, and McCartney was an early adopter. The 1970s and 1980s were the golden age of the synthesizer and artists ranging from Michael Jackson to Toto and Bruce Springsteen employed the CS-80 around the same time. Montgomery acknowledges that synthesizers were all the rage at the time, "but I don't like that," he says. "I'm a purist when it comes to music. I like real instruments."
Composer and musicologist Nate Sloan takes a more nuanced view. While he rates the song "pretty far at the bottom" of all the pop songs of the late '70s, "in terms of the Christmas canon, I think that's a different story. I think this is a fantastic Christmas song."
Source: Scott Neuman/NPR
In February of 1964, The Beatles scored their first-ever No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with their single, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. Following that No. 1 hit, The Beatles went on an incredibly dominant run and scored a string of No. 1 hit singles. Needless to say, The Beatles were are the height of their powers, and even if creating a No. 1 single wasn’t their objective, they still did it. Even though this is the ultimate goal of many bands and musicians, Ringo Starr and the rest of the band had a slight problem with it, because once you’ve gone No. 1 several times, where else is there to go?
Do No. 1 hits make a lot of money and produce deals for the opportunity to make more money? Yes, but if you’re a creative person, then you know money isn’t everything, and that the real currency is outperforming your former art. Well, that is seemingly what The Beatles wanted to do, but when they kept garnering No. 1 hit after No. 1 hit, they were worried that they had reached their creative peak. That being said, when they finally didn’t create a No. 1 hit, they were, weirdly enough, a bit relieved.
Why a Non-No. 1 Hit for The Beatles was a Breath of Fresh Air
Recalling their string of No. 1 hits, Starr said in The Beatles Anthology, “After Number One, where else is there to go? Number One was it.” “After that, of course, every bloody thing we did was Number One, and it got strange because in a weird way we were waiting for the one that wasn’t Number One,” added Starr.
However, in 1967, that string of No. 1 hits came to a close, as The Beatles released the incredibly experimental singles, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”. Now, both those singles were incredibly successful, as “Strawberry Fields Forever” peaked at No. 8 on the Hot 100 and “Penny Lane” ended up at No. 1 after debuting at No. 85 on the chart. Although they weren’t the typical songs, The Beatles previously saw themselves seamlessly climb to the top of the charts.
Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com
A remastered edition of the classic documentary series about the legendary rock band — with an additional episode included.
“It’s almost impossible to get the definitive story of the Beatles,” says Paul McCartney in The Beatles Anthology. That hasn’t stopped people trying. The craze for filmed fodder about the Fab Four has barely relented since the band split up in 1970; in the last five years alone, we’ve had films ranging from excellent (Peter Jackson’s Get Back) to perfectly fine (Martin Scorsese-produced Beatles ‘64) to niche (the Cirque du Soleil/Beatles collab All Together Now). Not to mention the four major biopics on each member, from Sam Mendes, arriving in 2027.
Now we have the return of the account that arguably comes closest to “definitive”. The Beatles Anthology was a landmark project when it was released in the early ‘90s, consisting of an 8-part television series (broadcast on ITV in the UK and ABC in the US), a collection of albums, and a book. Made with full participation of the band’s surviving members (McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr), it aimed to tell the exhaustive story of the band “more popular than Jesus”.
The Anthology now makes its debut on streaming with a bit of lick and polish from Jackson’s Wingnut Films, who apply the same magic they used on Get Back to turn the grainy footage higher resolution, the music higher fidelity. While it certainly feels sharper, a lot of material here might feel familiar: footage of policemen holding back screaming girls as the mop-topped men grin cheekily has over time become its own cliché.
To see the three of them hanging out and jamming together is a joy.
And yet. The extended running time of this series allows for deeper cuts. It is still remarkable to watch a minutes-long uninterrupted shot of the band giggling in a limo while fans claw at the windows like zombies, or play to Shea Stadium, treated like gods, bodies willingly flung at the stage. Despite their eternal cultural dominance, the facts of the Beatles remain extraordinary. “By the time I was 23, we’d done Sgt Pepper,” notes Harrison casually at one point.
Source: John Nugent/empireonline.com
Legendary musician Paul McCartney has announced a major revival of interest around his post‑Beatles band Wings: a new Wings collection is now available to stream or buy, his book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run has just hit shelves, and — most significantly — a new documentary film titled Man on the Run is slated to debut globally on Prime Video in February 2026.
For many younger readers, Wings may still seem like a distant name — but the band played a pivotal role not only in McCartney’s career after the split of the Beatles, but also in bringing rock-pop songs into the 1970s mainstream. Formed in 1971 by McCartney alongside his wife, singer-photographer-songwriter Linda McCartney, the band went on to produce some of the most beloved tracks in McCartney’s vast catalogue, blending melodic pop, rock, and sometimes experimental sensibilities.
Across several albums in the 1970s — including Red Rose Speedway, Wild Life, and later works — Wings gave the world heartfelt ballads, melodic rock and soulful love songs. In a recent Q&A on his own website, McCartney reflected on some of these songs with fondness. For instance, when asked about his favourite “deep cut” — a lesser‑known gem rather than a hit single — he singled out Daytime Nightime Suffering, also mentioning Arrow Through Me as another personal favourite. He noted that tracks like these often resurface when used in films or TV — an avenue through which younger listeners discover them decades later.
McCartney also acknowledged the song My Love as a particular highlight from the Red Rose Speedway era, a track he says holds special meaning for him and Linda. In his words, “It’s a love song to her really.” The single was a breakthrough for Wings — in fact, it reached number one in the US, underlining the commercial success the band enjoyed beyond the shadow of the Beatles name.
Diving further back, he explained the inspiration behind the title track of the album Wild Life: McCartney recalled how a safari trip, where he saw a road sign reading “The animals have the right of way,” struck him deeply. That experience led him to reflect on humanity’s arrogance and the dignity of wild animals — sentiments that found their way into the song and resonated with listeners.
All this shows that Wings was more than a “post‑Beatles side‑project.” It was a creative home for McCartney and Linda — a place where they explored love songs, social commentary, rock energy and musical experimentation. For many fans, Wings remains a beloved chapter of rock history, and songs like My Love, Daytime Nightime Suffering, Arrow Through Me or Wild Life stand as evidence of their artistic breadth.
With the upcoming documentary Man on the Run, McCartney seems determined to bring that legacy back into focus — not just for nostalgic older fans, but for a new generation. The film promises a curated look at Wings’ story, their music, the lives behind the band, and perhaps a renewed appreciation of their influence. Meanwhile, the new Wings collection and the book give audiences fresh access (streaming, physical and literary) to the full breadth of what the band achieved.
Source: Louise Ducrocq/nova.ie
A new documentary film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono features rare footage of The Beatles legend in Syracuse.
“One to One: John & Yoko” premiered earlier this month on HBO, focusing on the couple’s life in the early 1970s. Highlights include an intimate look at their life in a Greenwich Village apartment in New York, social activism amid the Vietnam War, and restored video of their “One to One” benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, Lennon’s only full-length show after leaving the Beatles.
But some of the never-before-seen material also includes scenes of Lennon and Ono at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, N.Y. The “unfinished” exhibition, Ono’s first solo museum show, opened on Oct. 8, 1971.
“It will be unfinished always because every piece in this exhibition is also growing because people add things to it," Ono says.
The doc shows the large crowd of more than 6,000 that gathered at the Everson for a glimpse of Lennon and Ono. At one point, the couple is seen having a private meal at a table in the lobby of the museum while fans look on from the balcony.
Fans can also see some of Ono’s exhibit, including a partially eaten apple starting to rot, a boy hammering a piece of metal, empty picture frames, and a girl who bumps into a wall inside a glass maze. Famed beat poet Allen Ginsberg even reads a poem (“...only U.S. honkies smear feces twixt their buttocks with clean paper...“) as a ”sculpture" by Ginsberg and Ono.
“One to One: John & Yoko,” directed by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald, premiered Nov. 14 on HBO and is currently streaming on HBO Max. The scenes from Syracuse’s Everson Museum are shown between the 17:50 and 20:12 marks.
Source: Geoff Herbert/syracuse.com
George Harrison wrote "Something," arguably one of the greatest love songs in music history, about his first wife, Pattie Boyd, but their marriage didn't stand the same test of time as his lyrics and melody: The pair divorced after Boyd left Harrison, a Beatle, for Eric Clapton, a guitar god. And that wasn't even the only love triangle to plague the couple's marriage. According to Boyd, Harrison cheated on her with his bandmate Ringo Starr's then-wife Maureen Starkey (no, really!). That's a lot of drama for a man known as the "quiet Beatle."
Keep reading to learn more about Harrisons wives, including who he was married to at the time of his death in 2001. Harrison was married two times: first to Pattie Boyd, from 1966 to 1974, then to Olivia Harrison, from 1978 until the time of his death in 2001. How did George Harrison and Pattie Boyd meet?
Boyd was 19 and just starting her modeling career when she got a small part as a school-aged Beatles fan in the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night. Harrison was immediately smitten with the young woman and asked her to dinner, but she politely declined because she was seeing someone else at the time. A week later, newly single and back on set for a photo shoot, she changed her answer — and the course of her life forever.
That summer, Harrison bought a quiet country home to retreat from the chaos of Beatlemania, and Boyd soon joined him there. Less than two years after their first meeting, on Jan. 21, 1966, they were married. Why did Pattie Boyd leave George Harrison? The short answer is that Boyd left Harrison for their friend and fellow rocker Eric Clapton, kicking off one of the most famous love triangles in music history. But, really, their marriage had been unraveling for years.
On leaving Harrison, Boyd told The Telegraph in 2022, “It was an extremely difficult decision of mine to make.” “I felt that I had to leave George because things were getting really out of hand. George was just being a different George. We had gone in different directions, basically. But we still loved each other…”
Addressing his well-documented infidelity, which included an affair with Ringo Starr’s then-wife Maureen, Boyd added, “It’s just that I think he wanted to spread his wings and take advantage of being the handsome, famous, rich guy that he was, and see how the girls feel about him. A hot-blooded boy – why not, I suppose.”
Did Pattie Boyd leave George Harrison for Eric Clapton? Technically, yes, but her marriage to Harrison had been suffering for years due in part to his own infidelity. Still, her decision to leave Harrison for Clapton — who had been pining for her for more than a decade despite being friends with the Beatle (she was even the inspiration for his 1970 hit “Layla”) — was a massive story in 1974 and remains a major part of the band's lore to this day.
Harrison, the most reclusive of the Beatles, wasn’t big on talking to the press about his private affairs (none of the band members were, really). But he did reportedly tell Men Only magazine in 1978 that, “For a long time I could not talk about Pattie, after she left. But I now admit that I loved her very much and wish her the best.”
Source: Patti Greco/au.lifestyle.yahoo.com
Have you met the Beatles? The odds are you have, whether you grew up with them, sought them out, or were never formally introduced. You may know the name, at least, even without having heard the numbers, as one knows Shakespeare’s without having read or seen a play, or even knowing he wrote them.
The Fab Four — phenomenal in their time, phenomenal after. Though they made their split official in 1970 after coming apart in bits and pieces, they have never gone away. As long as John Lennon lived, there was always the possibility of the band getting back together — in a classic “Saturday Night Live” bit, Lorne Michaels offered them $3,000 to reunite on the show — and his death, and the global consciousness of loss, launched an era of revived Beatles awareness, of finding new things to do with the old music, protecting the legacy and promoting the brand.
With the band’s recorded catalog lately being remixed, remastered and rereleased, in special editions with extra tracks, it was only logical that Apple would get around to the movies. Peter Jackson’s “Get Back,” his six-hour AI-enhanced cut of footage shot during the making of the album “Let It Be,” premiered Thanksgiving 2021, followed in May 2024 by his remastering of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s original “Let It Be” itself. (Last Thanksgiving, we got the Martin Scorsese-produced “Beatles ‘64,” built on the Maysles Brothers film of the band’s first visit to America; the moptops have become a new holiday tradition.)
Now, 30 years after it premiered here, also around Thanksgiving, the digital squeegee has been applied to “Anthology,” the band’s own multi-part video memoir. (It aired on ABC over three nights; this edition, which echoes the longer video release, comes as eight episodes, with a new, extra ninth.) Premiering Wednesday on Disney+, also over three nights, it does look great; my only complaint is that music, every little snippet of it, is mixed too loud against the rest of the film. To make it exciting, I suppose, or because that’s what the kids expect these days; but I am right when I tell you it is wrong.
Along with the film, the original “Anthology” project included a coffee table book; three two-CD sets of demos, alternates and unfinished takes; and two “new” songs, “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” in which the surviving Fabs added themselves to a demo recorded by John at the piano. (In 2023, a third song, “Now and Then,” was completed by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr; it topped charts in the U.S. and U.K. and won a Grammy for rock performance.) This year adds another audio set, “Anthology 4.”
Source: Robert Lloyd/latimes.com
Yoko Ono is spending her final years in reflective seclusion, far from the spotlight she once craved, with sources telling OK! she now believes she has changed the world and now wants the peace of watching it from a distance.
The avant-garde artist, musician and activist – who stalked John Lennon before they met – has retreated from public life decades after rising to global fame in the 1960s and meeting Lennon, whom she married in 1969.
Their personal and creative partnership, forged after they met at Ono's London art exhibit in 1966, reshaped cultural and political activism in the early 1970s as the couple settled in New York City. The pair welcomed their son Sean in 1975, made boldly experimental music, and became fixtures of anti-war and civil rights campaigns.
But Ono's world changed irreversibly on December 8, 1980, when Lennon was shot and killed outside their Upper West Side home as she stood nearby.
Yoko Ono said she missed her husband's 'tenderness' after he was shot. Ono later said about his assassination by unhinged fan Mark David Chapman: "What I miss most about John is his incredible tenderness and his belief in me ... love can sometimes be h---. You could abuse each other in the name of love. But the thing that worked in our relationship was that we never lost respect for each other and always made sure to express it. We loved each other like there was no tomorrow."
That devotion shaped the decades that followed Lennon's death, with Ono continuing to create art while guarding Lennon's legacy. She also remained the subject of intense public fascination and criticism, including lingering claims she was the reason for The Beatles' breakup.
The new HBO documentary One to One: John & Yoko, directed by Kevin Macdonald, revisited the pivotal era of the couple's activism, music and relationship. It charted their life in New York, where they collaborated on albums such as Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions, Some Time in New York City and Double Fantasy.
The film also recounted their One to One benefit concerts on August 30, 1972 – Lennon's only full-length performances after The Beatles' final show in 1966.
Source: Aaron Tinney/aol.com
The newly refurbished version of “The Beatles Anthology” has been rolling out on Disney+ over a period of days this week, with a newly commissioned Episode 9 premiering on the service Friday night. It gives the epic 1995 docuseries more than just a new edit and a fresh set of paint: it gives it an all-new finale that feels sweeter than the way the original project faded out with the gradual breakup of the most popular band of all time. And fans aren’t likely to mind the extra hour’s worth of either added context or additional sentiment.
With the new episode about to premiere, its director, Oliver Murray, told Variety about his intentions for this fresh finale. He’s the same man whom Apple Corps drafted to a short movie about the “final Beatles single,” “Now and Then,” when that was unveiled two years ago. Even though he was not yet a teenager when the original “Beatles Anthology” first aired in prime time 30 years ago, Murray was considered the right candidate to draw together footage that was shot at the time with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The three ex-Beatles became active Beatles once again at that point in drafting old John Lennon home demos to expand upon for “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” songs that were added to the “Anthology” albums also being released in ’95. And they even attempted, briefly, “Now and Then,” although it took till 2023 for that third number to come to fruition, but it at least gets foreshadowed in the new Ep9.
The British filmmaker says he gave himself the mission to humanize the three musicians as they reassessed their legacy in the ’90s, while also recognizing that their story is “modern, 20th century folklore (that) doesn’t age, in the same way that something like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ doesn’t age.” (The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Source: Chris Willman/variety.com
Before The Beatles came around, singles ruled the roost in terms of rock and roll importance. The band started to change that. Their ability was such that even their non-singles rivaled or surpassed the quality of their contemporaries’ biggest hits.
Because these four songs are so popular, you might think they were huge smashes. But The Beatles never even released them as singles.
“In My Life”
In the first half of their recording career, The Beatles, for the most part, released singles in the United Kingdom that didn’t appear on their albums. In turn, they usually reserved the albums for songs that wouldn’t get a single release. This wasn’t a hard and fast rule. But it did mostly account for brilliant songs like “In My Life” only getting exposure via LP. The song could easily have been another No. 1 for the group, as it’s one of the most beautiful, affecting ballads ever written. Of course, it wasn’t long before people who heard it realized its brilliance. It has received a ton of cover versions over the years as well. But none of them match the unaffected lead vocal of John Lennon on the original.
“A Day In The Life”
When The Beatles first began separating singles from albums, they did so as more of a commercial ploy. But by the time they got around to making Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it became more a matter of insisting on a sense of artistic purity. They didn’t really want any of the songs off that album to be presented as something apart from the whole. In the case of “A Day In The Life”, it still works beautifully when you hear it on its own on the radio. But it’s a different story when it comes rolling in quietly after the raucous applause from the reprise of the album’s title track. Hearing that final piano chord after going through the entire journey of the album makes for a special experience.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
