I am wasting my Sunday afternoon academically pondering Beatles music. Because I can and want to.

The other day, after many rumors and many denials from me insisting that it will never happen, Harmonix and Apple announced that there will be a version of Rock Band with Beatles songs.

Why was I denying it? Because most Beatles rumors are never true, no matter how plausible they may be. I mean, we still have no digital remastering of the Beatles catalogue. They're not even on iTunes, for pete's sakes! And even though I salivate for them, I still have never seen the Shea Stadium or the Let It Be films because they were out of print long before I was even born. There are so many things that Apple could be doing for Beatles fans, but since Apple doesn't want to give more money to Michael Jackson than it has to, it's barely done anything. So the video game actually being ready for stores by next Christmas? I still have doubts (the release date for the documentary DVD of the making of the Cirque du Soleil show keeps getting pushed back further and further), but I think this will happen.

Many older Beatles fans are actually mad about this, since they want Apple's priorities to be on more important things, such as the ones I listed above. But I disagree, and not just because I love playing games from the Guitar Hero and Rock band series. At the beginning of each cycle, I asked each of my students to write down some of their favorite bands and songs. Some of them wrote down things that I knew they were only aware of because of the music's presence in those video games. Only one student, out of almost 200 so far, wrote down the Beatles. Having this video game around will help them see the light, so to speak.

What I wanted to do, since I've obsessively listened to and studied the Beatles for about ten years now, is come of with a list of the songs that should be in this video game, to better complement the way the game works. The game has roles for vocals, guitar, bass and drums, so you'd have to pick songs that at least feature most of them in a challenging and interesting way. The press on the game has also said that there would be only 45 songs available in the game from the band's original catalogue from 1962-1969. I'm taking that to mean that the two songs on the Anthology are out, as well as any of the covers from the Live at the BBC set that weren't on the albums.

My picks are probably not what's going to be in the actual game, because I'm going to include tracks that aren't as well known to the casual fan. But this is my blog, and my opinion, so nyah.

Anyway, I went through the list of Beatles tracks and came up with an original list of 57 songs that would be playable in this game's format. That meant many tracks that didn't have things such as drum and bass parts (Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, Blackbird) were left out. Many songs were based off of piano riffs or orchestral accompaniments, so they were gone too. (Didn't pick a single track from the Magical Mystery Tour Album because of this.) Most of the cover versions were ignored because the Beatles stayed true to many of the the songs' original formats, and I wanted originality here. The notable exception is Twist and Shout, so I put it on the final list. I then whittled out 12 songs based on things like vocal difficulty (is there one part here, or three?) musical interest (sure, there's a guitar part, but it's potentially boring to play) and my personal preferences.

Here's the 12 that were on my list but I took out:

1. A Taste of Honey
2. Do You Want to Know a Secret
3. This Boy
4. If I Fell
5. I’ll Be Back
6. Eight Days a Week
7. You’re Going to Lose that Girl
8. Think for Yourself
9. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
10. Dear Prudence
11. I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
12. Two of Us

And the ones that I decided on:

1. I Saw Her Standing There
2. Twist and Shout
3. All My Loving
4. A Hard Day’s Night
5. And I Love Her
6. Can’t Buy Me Love
7. Things We Said Today
8. You Can’t Do That
9. I Feel Fine
10. I’ll Follow the Sun
11. Help
12. Another Girl
13. Ticket to Ride
14. I’ve Just Seen a Face
15. Drive My Car
16. Michelle
17. Girl
18. In My Life
19. Day Tripper
20. Paperback Writer
21. Rain
22. Taxman
23. She Said She Said
24. And Your Bird Can Sing
25. Getting Better
26. Good Morning Good Morning
27. Revolution
28. Back in the USSR
29. Birthday
30. Yer Blues
31. Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
32. Helter Skelter
33. Hey Bulldog
34. The Ballad of John and Yoko
35. Come Together
36. Something
37. Octopus’s Garden
38. Here Comes the Sun
39. The End
40. Dig a Pony
41. I Me Mine
42. I’ve Got a Feeling
43. One After 909
44. For You Blue
45. Get Back

I have no idea when the official list comes out, but I hope it's something similar to this. That'd be cool.