Eleanor Rigby - Significance

Significance

"Eleanor Rigby" is also important in The Beatles' evolution from a pop, live-performance band to a more experimental, studio-oriented band, though the track contains little studio trickery. In a 1967 interview Pete Townshend of The Who commented "I think 'Eleanor Rigby' was a very important musical move forward. It certainly inspired me to write and listen to things in that vein."

Though "Eleanor Rigby" was not the first pop song to deal with death and loneliness, according to Ian MacDonald it "came as quite a shock to pop listeners in 1966." It took a bleak message of depression and desolation, written by a famous pop band, with a sombre, almost funeral-like backing, to the number one spot of the pop charts. The bleak lyrics were not The Beatles' first deviation from love songs, but were some of the most explicit.

In some reference books on classical music, "Eleanor Rigby" is included and considered comparable to art songs (lieder). Howard Goodall said that The Beatles' works are "a stunning roll-call of sublime melodies that perhaps only Mozart can match in European musical history" and that they "almost single-handedly rescued the Western musical system" from the "plague years of the avant-garde". About "Eleanor Rigby", he said it is "an urban version of a tragic ballad in the Dorian mode."

Jerry Leiber said, "The Beatles are second to none in all departments. I don't think there has ever been a better song written than 'Eleanor Rigby.'" In 2004, this song was ranked number 137 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".