#2. "Here Comes the Sun" (The Beatles)

Have you ever had a song literally stop you in your tracks?  Where you're in the middle of something, and suddenly you hear a piece of music that commands your attention so completely you have to stop whatever you're doing and just listen?
I've had it happen three times in my life.  Once was in early 1982 when I was 4 years old.  
I remember it had been a cold, exceptionally damp winter, and it had overstayed its welcome by creeping into what should have been spring.  As much as I enjoyed snow, hot chocolate, and the smell of woodsmoke, I'd had it with frozen gloom.  The weather had been making every adult I'd encountered cranky, and it also had been keeping me from finishing an outdoors project that I'd started earlier in the fall, which made me cranky.  (A relative of ours in Western NC had a small creek running through her property, and I got it in my head that we should have a creek at our house, too.  So, I borrowed a little pickaxe from my dad's tool shed, and I started digging my own "creek" in our backyard: a 6-inch wide, 4-foot long mini-trench that I just assumed would fill with running water after a good rain.  It didn't quite work out like that.  And when my dad kind of stumbled upon it—or into it—while mowing the grass later that spring, he logically assumed some animal had destroyed a patch of his yard, and he filled it back in.)
Anyway, I remember getting up this one morning, and it was like someone had flipped a switch: it had been cold and disgusting the day before, but suddenly it was warm and sunny.  The South is notoriously fickle when it comes to March-April weather; however, this felt like spring had officially sprung.
My mom sensed it, too.  She opened every window in the house, turned on the radio, and started her spring cleaning routine while I finished watching my daily episode of Sesame Street over a bowl of Cheerios.  
Normally, I would have been glued to the set, watching Big Bird trying to convince the grown-ups that his pal Mr. Snuffleupagus wasn't imaginary.  But then I heard a song with this beautiful plucked guitar line coming from the radio, and I immediately turned off the T.V. so I could listen.  The DJ (the late Russ Cassell on WFBC-FM out of Greenville, SC) made a brief announcement about a listener requesting "the perfect spring song," and then came the refrain: Here comes the sun / Doo-doo-doo-doo / Here comes the sun / I say, it's alright... 
I sat in front of our stereo, transfixed as the verses unfolded.  Every time I thought the song had gotten as good as it could get, some new layer of vocals or strings would drop in, and it would get even better.  But nothing prepared me for the descending bridge section (Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...) with its syncopated handclaps and Moog synth buzzing away.  I think my jaw literally dropped.  It somehow was gorgeous, cheerful, and rocking, all at the same time.  I'd never heard anything like it.
I didn't budge until the very end.  After the very last droplets of guitar had faded, I ran into the kitchen where my mom was mopping the floor and started trying to describe it to her.  I sang a few bars of what I could remember, when she put down the mop and went right to her record collection.  
"Is this it?" she asked, dropping the needle on the B-side of Abbey Road (1969).
And there it was again, pouring out of the speakers in glorious, static-less stereo.
She gave me a kiss on my noggin.  "You have good taste in music, kiddo," she told me.
Years later, reading about what had inspired George Harrison to write "Here Comes the Sun," I discovered that his muse had been a spring day after a long period of dreariness, not unlike how I'd first experienced the song.
Apparently, winter in England had been particularly long in 1969.  Furthermore, Harrison and his bandmates had been mired in endless meetings with accountants regarding The Beatles' cash-bleeding venture, Apple Corps Ltd.  In short, Harrison was burnt out.  
So in the middle of the tedium, along came a pleasant spring day, and Harrison decided to blow off his business meetings and hang out at his pal Eric Clapton's house instead.  
As he stated in his autobiography I, Me, Mine (1980), "The relief of not having to go and see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric's acoustic guitars and wrote 'Here Comes The Sun'."

"She Said, She Said" (The Beatles)

Apart from being one of Ringo Starr's best performances on tape (his drum fills here are a thing of wonder), "She Said, She Said" is one of John Lennon's best compositions on the album Revolver (1966).
The Beatles were staying at a rented house in Beverly Hills during a break from touring in mid-1965, when Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of The Byrds dropped by with LSD, ready to party.  Everyone (with the exception of Paul McCartney) got their dosage and started tripping.  However, George Harrison began to panic, telling the others that he felt like he was dying.  Actor Peter Fonda, who also happened to be in attendance, tried to console Harrison by assuring him that he wasn't dying, repeatedly telling him, "You're not dying; I know what it's like to be dead," while simultaneously showing The Beatle a bullet wound from childhood, the result of a gun accident that had almost killed him.  
Whatever Fonda's intentions, the discussion of death and bullet wounds freaked Harrison out that much more.  Lennon, ever the big brother to Harrison, berated Fonda for talking about death, chiding him with, "You're making me feel like I've never been born!"
As McGuinn later recounted to Rolling Stone, "We were all on acid, and John couldn't take it.  John said, 'Get this guy out of here!'  It was morbid and bizarre."
To stick it to Fonda, Lennon wrote a song that he initially called "He Said, He Said," about the incident in LA, incorporating Fonda's words (I know what it's like to be dead) as well as his own retort (You're making me feel like I've never been born) into the song's lyrics.  Ultimately, Lennon decided that "he said" didn't sound quite right, so he changed it to "She Said, She Said."
It's a favorite of mine because it sounds deceptively simple: a straight-ahead rocker with a bit of West Coast influence.  But there are subtle things in Lennon's composition that are pure genius—like switching from 4/4 to 3/4 and back again on the bridges, utilizing the shifting time signature as a way to indicate dialogue between two people who aren't really syncing up intellectually.  Same thing with Lennon's chiming rhythm guitar against Harrison's almost brass-like lead.
It also has a pure, mid-60s guitar sound and a simple but effective bassline, which is played by Harrison, not McCartney.  (Like the party that inspired the song, McCartney sat this one out.)