The words from The Beatles' All You Need Is Love have been voted the greatest words of all time. I mean, please!
First of all, while I love words, it's a rather farcical competition. Secondly, the song starts with:
- Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
And this is the chorus:
- All you need is love, all you need is love,
- All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
So OK, the interim verses are a little better, e.g.:
- There's nothing you can do that can't be done,
- Nothing you can sing that can't be sung,
- Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game,
- It's easy.
...and admittedly, it beats the trite that is Imagine, but is this really the best of the best of the best? We're not talking songs here, we're talking words. To put this into perspective, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" came tenth. Churchill's "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few" came fourth. Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress me Much" seventh.
(That last entry was artistic licence on my part. Her lyrics were not included in the competition, although I'm sure that if they had, they would have stormed it.)
