Songs and Activities

INDEX

• INTRODUCTION

• Love Me Do

• SONGS AND ACTIVITIES

• CULTURE AND SOCIETY

• When I’m sixty four
• Revolution
• Get back
• Eleanor Rigby
• A hard day’s night
• Taxman
• Strawberry fields forever

• VOCABULARY

• Hello, goodbye
• All together now
• Rain
• Act naturally
• Hey Jude

• GRAMMAR

• All my Loving
• If I fell
• I me mine
• I saw her standing there
• You’re going to lose that girl

• PRONUNCIATION

• Yesterday
• The inner Light
• Dig it
• Lady Madonna
• Good Morning, Good Morning

• HAPPENING

• Michelle

• Bibliography

• INTRODUCTION: YOUTHFUL BRITAIN

“Like much of post-war Europe, Britain had become economically dependent on the United States, thanks to the US Marshall Aid Programme;Britain was able to recover quickly from the war. Working people now had a better standard of living than ever before. There was enough work for everyone. Wages were about 30 per cent higher than in 1939 and prices had hardly risen at all.

People had free time to enjoy themselves. At weekends many watched football matches in large new stadiums. In the evenings they could go to the cinema. They began to go away for holidays to low-cost “holiday camps”. In 1950, car production was twice what it had been in 1939, and by 1960 cars were owned not only by richer people but by many on a lower income. It seemed as if the sun shone on Britain. As one Prime Minister said: “You’ve never had it so good”, a remark that became famous.

It was also the age of youth. Young people had more money in their pockets than ever before, now that wages for those just starting workimproved. The result was that the young began to influence fashion, particularly in clothing and music. Nothing expressed the youthful “pop” culture of the sixties better than the Beatles whose music quickly became internationally known. It was no accident that the Beatles were working-class boys from Liverpool. They were real representatives of a popular culture.

Young people began to express themselves in other ways. They questioned authority, and the culture in which they had been brought up. In particular they rebelled against the sexual rules of Christian society. Some young people started living together without getting married. In the early 1960s the number was small, perhaps only 6 per cent, but it grew to 20 per cent within twenty years.

Improvements in birth control made this more open sexual behaviour possible. Divorce became much easier, and by 1975 one marriage in three ended in divorce, the highest rate in Europe. Older people were frightened by this development, and called the new youth culture the “permissive society”. Perhaps the clearest symbol of the permissive age was the mini skirt, a far shorter skirt than had ever been worn before”

(McDowall, 2003:170-171)

• SONGS AND ACTIVITIES

TRIVIA:

It is an early John Lennon and Paul McCartney song, principally written by Paul in 1958-59 while playing truant from school.

• CULTURE AND SOCIETY

TRIVIA:

It’s a song by a young man to his lover, and is about his plans of growing old together with her. Although the theme is about ageing, it was one of the 1st songs Paul wrote, when he was sixteen.

ACTIVITIES

• 1. SaintValentine’s Day: is on 14th February. History, traditions. Do you know other festivities in the Anglo-Saxon world?

• 2. How do lovers express their love for each other nowadays?

• 3. Welfare State. When did it start? Where? Search for this information in the Internet and answer the question.

• 4. Discussion: Social security and health care, major conquest of human beings.Do you agree? Why?

• 5. Why some political parties want to destroy the Welfare State? Give reasons.

TRIVIA:

It was inspired by the May 1968 uprising in France. The lyrics can be interpreted as a cautionary response to the radical left elements of the counter culture movement of the worldwide Civil Rights Movement.

ACTIVITIES

• 1. What happened in 1968 in France, Checoeslovaquia, Vietnam?

• 2. Discussion: Make love and not the war.

• 3. Talk about the human rights movement nowadays in the world.

• 4. If I could change the world,I’d... Write five sentences.

• 5. Internet search. Who was Mao?

TRIVIA:

McCartney was inspired to satirise the “Rivers of Blood Speech” by British Cabinet Minister Enoch Powell, in which Powell use a reference in Virgil to the river Tiber foaming with blood to describe what he thought would happen if the tide of Commonwealth immigrants was not stemmed.

ACTIVITIES

• 1. Explain the meaning of Racism and Xenophobia with your own words.

• 2. Do you know what the Commonwealth is? Which countries belong to it?

• 3. Discussion: Immigration is necessary for our country. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

• 4. Can you find the States of the USA that appear in the song in the map? Do you know how many States are in the USA?

• 5. What is a melting pot?

TRIVIA:

It was written by Paul McCartney. He developed the theme of loneliness of old age, morphing his song from the story of a young girl to that of an elderly woman whose loneliness is worse for having to clean up after happy couples.

ACTIVITIES

• 1. Listen to the song. With what feeling would you associate it?

• 2. Find as many songs as possible that talk about loneliness and isolation: just three examples to start:

“Only the lonely” by Roy Orbison (1960)

“All by myself” by Eric Carmen (1975)

“I wanna dance with somebody (who loves me)” by Whitney Houston (1987)

• 3. Discussion. Do you think we are alone nowadays?

• 4. Do you need to belong to a specific group in society to be important?

• 5. NGO´s are well known today. Do you know any of them? Would you become a member of one of them? Give reasons.

ACTIVITIES

• 1. What is the song about?

• 2. Internet search: When did the women liberation movement begin? In which countries did it start?

• 3. Woman is only to back men when they need it. Discuss it.

• 4. Who does the household chores in your house?

• 5. Do you think a woman can earn more money than a man?

TRIVIA:

It was written by GeorgeHarrison (1966) based on a commonpersonification of tax collection agencies such as the HM Customsand Excise, the Inland Revenue or the Internal Revenue Service.Georgeperformsthe role of a taxman on the song inatongue-in-check manner.

ACTIVITIES

• 1. What does a constituency mean? Do you know how the voting system operates in Britain?

• 2. Internet Search: When did the Labour Party begin in Britain?

• 3. Internet Search: Who was Wilson? And Heath?

• 4. If you were rich would you render a lot of money to the State? Discuss it.

• 5. Internet search: HM Customs and Excise. Find the equivalent in Spanish.

TRIVIA:

John Lennon began writing the song in late 66 while in Almeria (Spain) filming Richard Lester’s How I won the War.

The theme of Nostalgia for his childhood in Liverpool is present in the song. Strawberry Fields is the name of a Salvation Army orphanage. The song’s style tone seems to have been influenced by his LSD experiences.

ACTIVITIES

• 1. Find films where The Beatles appear. Name them.

• 2. What do you mean by nostalgia? Have you ever felt nostalgic? When did it happen?

• 3. Internet Search: Salvation Army.

• 4. LSD: Find the meaning for thisacronym.

• 5. When did the Hippy Movement start? Can you relate it to any country?

• VOCABULARY

TRIVIA: