YouTube Revolver

I had the urge to listen to "Tomorrow Never Knows" today, which I probably hadn't heard in 20-plus years, except for the excerpt on Mad Men on Sunday (which I've read cost the show a quarter million). Not owning a copy of Revolver, I naturally went to YouTube to look for it. But I also was astonished to find the entire album (UK version) posted as one chunk.

Not only that, but there are more records: mostly canonical rock albums of the period in the suggestions bar, but a few more recent ones as well. I vaguely thought that there was a 10-minute limit on videos, but I don't really don't pay attention to YouTube that closely. The bigger surprise is that the copyright holders haven't swatted these down. Surely they could. Maybe the postings are considered a free way to market mp3 downloads.

So I listened to "Tomorrow Never Knows." When I heard it in younger days, it was just one of many Beatles songs. Sure, they did songs like that. But I was listening some years after all their work had been released. Now that I know more about popular songs recorded in the decades before it, I have some inkling of how strange the song must have sounded when new; it and most of the album.