Giles Martin ranks the three most important Beatles songs: "It really touches me"

26 November 2025, 13:15

Giles Martin reveals his favourite Beatles songs and why they're STILL so influential 55 years on

Giles 'son of George' Martin shares his own personal Best of the Beatles with us.

The Beatles released over 200 songs during (and after) their lifetime, with everyone having their personal favourites.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but Giles Martin's is certainly worth listening to.

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Giles is much more than just the son of Beatles producer George Martin. As George's hearing failed over the years, the young Giles helped out his dad by being an extra pair of ears as his assistant.

The Martins collaborated on the stunning Cirque du Soleil mashup project Love in 2006, and by the time of the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 2017 – a year after George's passing, aged 90 – Giles became the producer in charge of the band's re-releases and remixes.

So when Gold sat down with Giles to talk about the Anthology 4 collection that he has produced, we also asked him what he thinks are the three most important songs in The Beatles' back catalogue.

The Beatles - A Day In The Life

"I think 'A Day in the Life'," Giles started. "I have the original score for 'A Day in the Life', my dad's orchestral thing, which he gave me.

"It's a song that really touches me, from John's voice at the beginning to Paul's middle section. It's a poignant song."

He continued: 'In My Life – it's an incredible lyric. I spoke the words at my dad's funeral... it was one of his favourite songs."

Struggling to pick his third choice out of the couple of hundred classics the band recorded, Giles admitted: "It changes... I kind of like 'You Never Give Me Your Money', from Abbey Road. I love that second half of Abbey Road."

During the interview, Giles also admitted that despite his dad being so important in its creation, he wasn't actually a fan of The Beatles' music growing up.

Instead, while he now is overwhelmed by the magic, purity and "complete beauty" of The Beatles, he and his friends were more enamoured by then-current artists, like Adam Ant and Madness and then 1990s bands, like Radiohead, whom he became friends, and The Prodigy.

He also claimed that he never really had any ambition to work on Beatles music when he started his career, but ended up stepping into the role just to help out his dad.

Of the "fast and clear" decision-making process when it came to putting together Anthology 4, he said that the guiding light was whether or not he felt passionate about a certain track, as well as picking versions of songs that fans would want to listen to more than once.

Watch the trailer for The Beatles Anthology

"I don't believe in putting material out just so people can collect it," Giles said.

"You want to engage it. And some of these versions, like take 1 of 'In My Life' or the version of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' are valid in their own right. You want to listen to them more than once. They sound good."

Anthology 4 is released on November 21 and, after initial plans to release it physically only as a collection with the re-release of Anthologies 1-3, will also be made available as a standalone compilation.

The Beatles Anthology comes to Disney+ on November 26, with the new bonus ninth episode available from November 28.