NASA this week beamed a Beatles song into the Universe, hoping that someone or something somewhere will hear the song a million years from now. By then the Sun will have devoured the Earth, and all the art created here will be lost forever, except for Across the Universe, recorded in the Beatles's final phase. This song was recorded several times in 1968-69, officially released on Let it Be in 1970. But the better version, You Tubed below, was in the vaults until 1995-96, when the Beatles issued their unreleased recordings for the Anthology series.

This version of Across the Universe sums up the Beatles career in a way that few songs have. John Lennon wrote and sang it, unlike the earlier days when he and Paul McCartney jointly wrote and sang the Beatles' greatest hits. You can hear sitar on this song, an Indian instrument that George Harrison became enamored with, whose sound seems to capture the spirit of that decade, even if Indian musicians had long mastered the instrument decades before. The weary sound on 1968's Across the Universe reflects a real-life fatigue as the 1960's began to catch up on the Beatles, their manager having died in 1967 and the Beatles left to run the business. They did so poorly, hiring bad advisers and fighting amongst themselves over money, all the while churning out the best music of the 1960's. Nowadays, when celebrities fight over money and legal problems, they stop working. Somehow the Beatles found the time to record the White Album, Abbey Road and Let it Be, three essential albums in the Beatles' canon. Not to mention Hey Jude, the anthemic masterpiece that stands along the best of the late 1960's.

By 1968, the Beatles were still the best band in the business. But they no longer towered over the competititon. It wasn't 1964 anymore, when the nearest competitor was the Beach Boys. By 1968, we had Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Rolling Stones, Cream, Bob Dylan. It's revisionist history to say that these artists picked up where the Beatles left off. By this point John, Paul, George and Ringo were still leading the way. Only a schmendrick would believe otherwise.