

No Beatles song uses horns better than “Penny Lane.” David Mason’s piccolo trumpet solo-the first time the high-pitched instrument was used in pop music-is a thing of beauty by itself, but all the brass and winds give a joyful tinge to the nostalgic song about the actual street where John and Paul would change buses to visit each others’ houses as teens. Here are our picks for the 30 greatest Beatles songs of all time. Notable entries from our 2015 list that didn’t make the cut this time around include “Come Together,” “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Here Comes the Sun,” but we’ve also added a good amount of undersung masterpieces to balance out those losses. The popularity of albums and tracks are firmly in flux, and our ranking sets out to illustrate that. Since the band is always present and relevant in the zeitgeist, the cultural consensus on their catalog is constantly shifting. We ranked the 50 best Beatles songs nearly a decade ago, and we decided it was time for an upgrade. Without the Beatles, the DNA of modern music as we know it would look unrecognizable. From Please Please Me to Abbey Road (or Let It Be, commercially), the quartet have influenced thousands-likey millions-of people to pick up an instrument and start writing songs. How John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr managed to make music together remains a mythical truth over half-a-century later.

Since 1960, The Beatles-four fabulous lads from Liverpool, England-have remained the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the history of music.
