The Beatles fans are defending Hey Bulldog and are suggesting the Yellow Submarine album song is the band’s very best.
Not everyone was convinced by the claim it was one of the best songs in the Fab Four’s catalogue, but the song seems to have gained some fans after a Reddit thread on the r/TheBeatles page. A user wrote: “Let’s stop pretending Hey Bulldog isn’t one of the best Beatles songs of all time. This is definitely in my top five Beatles songs, maybe even top three. Amazing riff that gets me jumping every time, simple yet catchy drums, rumbling bass line, satisfying distortion guitar, vocals that just hit (admittedly the lyrics could be better).
The song was further defended by users who say there is much to appreciate about the instrumentals heard on the song. One user wrote: “Big favourite of mine. Very tasty guitar solo from George.” Another user pulled an extract from engineer Geoff Emerick’s book, Here, There and Everywhere, to highlight how great the solo on Hey Bulldog is. Emerick says it is “one of the few times” Harrison got the guitar riff down “right away”.
He wrote: “Harrison’s solo was sparkling … one of the few times that he nailed it right away. His amp was turned up really loud, and he used one of his new fuzz boxes, which made his guitar absolutely scream.”
Another user wrote of Hey Bulldog: “Symbolically it’s kind of a return to form. It’s got the spikiness of 1966 Beatles. That era took a little hiatus in 1967. Even the Reprise on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has a sort of wash over it. It’s not as urgent as ’66 or ’68 Beatles rock. Hey Bulldog was the end of that era, waking up from the dream, shaking the dust off the Gibson SG.”
A third added: “There’s only two kinds of people: those that love Hey Bulldog, and those that haven’t heard it.” Others were confused at Hey Bulldog being labelled an underrated song by the original poster and called The Beatles’ discography an “embarrassment of riches” with little room for failure.
Let's stop pretending Hey Bulldog isn't one of the best Beastles songs of all time
by inTheBeatles
They wrote: “Beatles music is an embarrassment of riches. There really is no underrated song. It’s amazing that those was just knocked off quickly, almost a throwaway. This would be many other band’s top song.” Another asked: “Who’s pretending?”
The original poster replied: “Not a lot of people recognise it, I feel like it should be up there with Hey Jude and Here Comes the Sun. Like if you were getting into The Beatles and didn’t know their songs and you heard Hey Bulldog in their top ten you wouldn’t be surprised.”
The original poster added: “It baffles me that they thought that this song wasn’t that good, and that it was tossed onto the Yellow Submarine soundtrack almost like an afterthought. Any other band would have KILLED to have a track like Hey Bulldog under their belt!”
