Bill Pirkle notes:

>Item, AP, London, A group of legendary songwriters named the song "In My
>Life" written by John Lennon (Beatles, Rubber Soul album) as the greatest
>[pop?] song ever written.

And Dave Lampson comments:

>[By my count there are more than 50 different covers of this song
>currently available on recordings.  ...  If a "classic" is at least
>partially defined by its performance longevity, then this song certainly
>passes that part of the test.  -Dave]

I've been a big Beatles fan since they first appeared on Ed Sullivan,
and I'd rank "In My Life" somewhere around, oh, let's say, my 90th favorite
Beatles song.  On a good day.  I've never met anyone who thought it was
their best song (of course, there are lots of people I haven't met).
So--if there is such a thing as a "classic," who gets to say so? Critics?
Musicians? Average people? As an English professor, it's an issue I have
to confront every day.  How (and perhaps more importantly, why) does a
literary or musical "canon" come into existence? Should we embrace
terms like "classic" because they mark works of particular excellence or
endurance, or should we reject terms like "classic" because they presuppose
an excellence which is not appreciated by large numbers of individuals, or
an endurance subject to the tastes of particular generations?

Just wondering.

Peter Goldstein