Rant #1,988: Real Love

I think that with everything going on today in this country and the world, what we all really need is some real love.

We got it back in 1996, and we need it again today.

What exactly am I talking about?

I am talking about the Beatles' last and final hit record, which was released a quarter century after they broke up.

"Real Love" hit No. 11 on Billboard's Hot 100 during the spring of 1996, surely a lower posting for an act that truly changed the world ... but coming a quarter century after their breakup in 1971, it was truly an astonishing placement.

The song was crafted upon an original 1979 demo by John Lennon, with new vocals and instrumentation added by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr--a method employed just a few months earlier to bring "Free As a Bird" to the charts.

Anyway, while "Real Love" was kind of pedestrian and bland--and let's be honest about it, few would have even noticed its release if it didn't have "Beatles" on the label and part of the successful "Anthology" series--its sentiment is a perfect one, building upon the band's classic "All You Need Is Love" in a kind of unremarkable way.

I kind of liked the single, I kind of didn't, but like most people, I bought the single because, well, heck, these are the Beatles that we are talking about.

The method for crafting this song from a skeleton of a demo was new and brilliant at the time, but it since has been used by many artists to resuscitate music that, for one reason or another, could not be released when originally created, including by the Monkees last year on their "Good Times!" album.

Although there were a couple of examples of this on the record, the one that stands out is "Love to Love," an old Neil Diamond song pitched to the Monkees and recorded by them years ago with lead vocal by Davy Jones.

The song had been released here and there over the years, but for this album, it was taken with the late Jones' vocals and punched up with contributions from Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones and Peter Tork.

Yes, the Monkees do owe everything to the Beatles, even in making such a current recording possible.

But anyway, we all do need "Real Love" today.

We need to step away from it all, stop making everything political, and just take a deep breath.

We should wonder about how fickle Mother Nature can be, we should step back and wonder about Aaron Judge and his momentous home runs, we should look at our families and wonder about how much we love and care for them.

We should stop bickering and fighting over nothing.

Heck, I am as guilty as anyone about trying to prove my point, and while I will stick with what I have said, I am done with it, and I am moving on.

We should keep our beliefs, and voice them when necessary, but stop making everything related to a political diatribe, because it has gotten just soooooooooo boring and pointless.

Let's take "Real Love" and make it a starting point for slowing down and taking life in, because every day fighting and complaining about nothing is a wasted day.

And how many days do each of us have to throw away like this?