‘Eleanor Rigby’ Is a Short Story That Happens to Be a Song

Douglas Elbinger/Getty ImagesHearing John Lennon’s “No Reply” in the autumn of 1964, music publisher Dick James remarked to the songwriter that he—and the Beatles—were making progress. Asked what James meant, the publisher responded by saying that “No Reply” told a complete story. It had an arc, and ended with a resolution.The implication was that the other Beatles songs hadn’t, though that wasn’t the band’s intention to produce songs of that nature. They were bursts of sounds long on energy, with chord changes and acts of melodic derring-do that continue to thrill us, overlooked as the Beatles early catalogue has become.Lennon and Paul McCartney utilized an abundance of pronouns to up the urgency of those songs, as if they were secrets meant just for one person—you—that all the world could hear, which was OK and in keeping with what felt like loyalty.Read more at The Daily Beast.