The Beatles are now on iTunes. After twelve hours of downloading, here is the chart for the most popular songs:

How perfectly divided. If you look at the primary songwriter for each track, here's how that top-five list breaks down:

1. George Harrison
2. Paul McCartney
3. John Lennon
4. Paul McCartney
5. John Lennon

Lennon and McCartney each get two, George gets one. To make it even more fair, neither Lennon nor McCartney has taken the top spot.

The top albums list for today shows Abbey Road at #6 and the White Album at #9. Since no Beatles tracks have cracked the top ten individual songs, and since the digital downloads have been such a long time coming, it's probably safe to assume that die hard fans already have these tracks in their libraries (if they use iTunes at all). Perhaps we can use these downloads as a metric to fuel Paul vs. John debates in the new century.

But why debate? John wins.

Actually, I typed that, then decided to look at my own play counts in iTunes. The Ballad of John and Yoko (Lennon) is the most-played Beatles track in my collection, and the 9th most-played track overall. Behind it is Dear Prudence (Lennon), then two McCartney tracks, three Harrisons, then two that Ringo sings (but only one he wrote). The White Album is the most-played Beatles album (3rd overall), followed by Abbey Road (5th overall) and Rubber Soul (15th overall).

Most of these songs are officially "Lennon/McCartney" compositions, and while the primary songwriters have been identified for most tracks, the whole band deserves credit for performing, tweaking and recording them, etc. 

In case you're wondering, What's New Pusssycat? is the most-played song in my library. One of the plays was me listening to it and realizing it's a completely insane song. The next ten or so plays were me trying to convince other people that the song is completely insane. The next 50 were me leaving it on repeat to mess with Linda.