TRACK ONE: “BLACKBIRD” BY THE BEATLES

OUR NEW COLUMN DISSECTING THE GREATEST ROCK SONGS EVER WRITTEN

- By Rudraa Abirami Sudarshan

Nestled in side B of The Beatles’ self-titled 1968 album, AKA the White Album, is “Blackbird”, a testament to the fact that acoustic guitars are not to be underestimated in comparison to their electric cousins.

“Blackbird” is a delicate song and was an unusual hit yet it became one of the most widely covered songs with 732 different versions of it to date.

“Blackbird’s” lyrics and melody are a product of two very different eras, which is perhaps what makes this song sound so timeless.

McCartney wrote “Blackbird” in the spring of 1968 (April) at High Park Farm in Kintyre, Scotland, soon after returning from his trip to India. At that time racial tensions were at an all-time high in the U.S., with Martin Luther King Jr being assassinated just a few weeks before the song was written.

The Little Rock Nine incident in Little Rock, Arkansas was inspiration for the song, with the word “Blackbird” meaning black girl. In an attempt to desegregate students, in 1957, nine African American students (Little Rock Nine) were enrolled in the all-white Little Rock Central High School. This sparked a civil rights movement when they were denied entry to the school by the then Governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus. It took President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s intervening to finally allow them to attend school.

During his One on One tour in 2016, McCartney met two of those girls from the Little Rock Nine on his stop in Little Rock.

It’s a very symbolic song that echoes the struggle of the oppressed, but at the same time takes on the empowering and hopeful tone that most of McCartney’s songs are wont to do (