Popular Culture Review 30.2
Honey ,” “ Hold Me Tight ” [ recorded at the time but held over for the next LP , With the Beatles ]), deep relationship (“ P . S . I Love You ”), stirrings of doubt (“ There ’ s a Place ”), fading affection (“ Anna ”), and rejection / break-up (“ Misery ”). No older than 22 , the four Beatles had not only mastered their craft as pop musicians but had experienced and / or observed the love / loss cycle with sufficient maturity to channel what they had learned into pop-rock tunes that to this day sell in the millions annually . Much of their catalog following Please Please Me showcased ever more sophisticated and nuanced musical expression of the vagaries of love . Sheffield uses the 2000 compilation 1 to “ prove that three things never change : ( 1 ) people love the Beatles , ( 2 ) it ’ s a little weird and scary how much people love the Beatles , and ( 3 ) even people who love the Beatles keep underestimating how much people love the Beatles ” ( 307 ). 1 “ shocked the industry by selling 30 million , 40 million , something like that . It ... was the fastest-selling album of all time ” ( 306 ). It sold so well because most if not all of its purchasers were either in relationships or had been in relationships that were , would be , or needed to be enhanced , salvaged , figured out , or survived by listening to the Beatles , a pop / rock group that broke up 30 years before the release of 1 .
CONCLUSION
The reader ’ s not-knowing Jhumpa Lahiri ’ s intention in referring / alluding to the Beatles in The Namesake does not alter her sleight-of-hand in staging his interaction with them . Without slowing down to ponder Lahiri ’ s referential touch in two key scenes in Gogol / Nikhil ’ s life , readers of the present analysis , along with the writer of it , may not have realized the degree to which they were key scenes in the first place . Had
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