I’m visiting my mom in Wilmington, Delaware for a few weeks in the summer of 2006. I’m fifteen. Mom drank and did a few lines before retiring to the bedroom we shared during our visits. My younger brother stays up with her as she looks out the window for cops, while I escape downstairs to watch MTV. I know from bits I’ve heard on the radio and seen on the Internet that “Miss Murder” is in the top 10. I have to see Davey. I have to hear his voice. I need the song to enter my bloodstream. I don’t care if I had to stay up through the witching hour to hear it. I need it now. 

Recently, a person said to me, “The ONLY good Beatles song is ‘Get Back’ and this is undisputed.” (*COUGH* co-editor of Olney Magazine *COUGH* *COUGH*) In response to this drastically mistaken opinion, I decided to list twenty of my favorite Beatles songs, with some context added, all mainly for the benefit of one of our editors. This was magnificently difficult considering the unfathomably high number of great Beatles songs, but my hand was forced. You won’t enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed listening to The Beatles, but I hope you might enjoy it a little—somehow.

My first experience being inside of a car, where I KNEW it was more than just metal and 4 wheels, was inside my dad’s early-90s Jaguar XJ. My dad is a welder by trade and my mom was working for Macy’s at the time. We did not have a lot of money. Our socioeconomic status growing up was the shrug emoji. However, my Pops had what he called a “good year”, and found this used example of an automobile at a local mechanics shop in 1995. That was the most comfortable car I had at that point and, even to this day, will ever sit in.