Listening to 'Maybe I'm Amazed' by Wings. I never knew the song until Crystal Bowersox covered it on last season of AI, then James Durbin this season. Gus asked me why wouldn't I know it. I said, the Beatles are my favourite band, but if I also listened to all their individual things from their careers post-Beatles, that would overwhelm me too much. There is too much, simply, and it complicates what the music of the Beatles holds for me. I never like to think that they simply split up and went off doing their own thing... I think of them as an entity, that is how I love them best. Even then, this song is brilliant... from the lyrics, to the piano, to the drums, the melody. Paul McCartney does these fantastic things with the piano, I get jealous, these little riffs in the middle of songs that bring a whole new element to them. If you listened to the original you'd hear it, the piano, how much it matters. I really like the James Durbin version as well just because he's such a good singer, but the arrangement was so garishly pop I feel like it has lost something.

Favourite Beatles songs (in order):
1. Hey Jude
2. Come Together
3. Here Comes The Sun
4. Nowhere Man
5. Girl
6. Norwegian Wood
7. Because
8. Something
9. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
10. Let It Be

It was incredibly hard to put together that list, in fact I think it might alter itself every once in awhile. There are tons of songs jostling for a spot on that list but I had to be brutal, and it hurt me to be so, even if they are just songs. That sounds stupid. But the top 3 are quite permanent.

I remember the first time I was exposed to the Beatles. Not even them, really... sitting in the lobby of a hotel in, I think it was Hokkaido, Japan, listening to a violinist play 'Let It Be', no singing or anything, just the violin. I only remember thinking that the melody was so beautiful I wanted to cry, like something was welling up inside, the same feeling I get when I see starving African children on TV. That's what I felt.

Finished reading Norwegian Wood in one day. I guess it was overhyped for me. To be completely honest I do not feel anything after reading it. I'm not bowled over, the story wasn't super fantastic for me. I didn't like Midori. I suppose I was sad because when Naoko killed herself, the fact that she never loved Toru was very depressing, but in a sense I guess that's all there was left for her to do, join Kizuki. But then again, I thought her character was such an enigma, I don't know. I felt like there was not enough about her that Toru could really love, love enough to go through all that trouble. Not sure I'm going to bother to watch the movie.

Not as good as I wanted it to be, sadly. I read somewhere that Murakami became extremely famous after Norwegian Wood, to his dismay. It's odd, isn't it! He didn't want to be famous because of his writing. Almost as if he didn't write to be read, which reminds me of how Roquentin in Nausea wrote, simply because he wanted to write, and not because he wanted to be read. Maybe Murakami will be comforted by the thought that I'm not contributing to burgeon his repulsive fame. I feel like he would.