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Charles Olney

@olneyce.bsky.social
135 followers 101 following 210 posts

VAP at Emory Political Science. Until recently, Associate Professor at UTRGV. I study justice, democracy, political identity, and law. But mostly post about women's football and my dog. Uppsala, Sweden

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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's hard for any Beatles song to be underrated, but this one qualifies
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Nowhere Man turns alienation into something life-affirming. The descending melody and minor-key turn suggest isolation, but Paul's bubbling bass, luminous guitars and those three-part harmonies surround John with warmth, support and joy. beatles208.substack.com/p/53-nowher…
beatles208.substack.com
53. Nowhere Man
A life-affirming song about depression
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
If I Fell really does sound like angels singing. But its beauty depends on two bits of dissonance: lyrics trapped in the wreckage of an old heartbreak, and harmonies that strain just enough at the edges to reveal John and Paul inside them beatles208.substack.com/p/58-if-i-f…
beatles208.substack.com
58. If I Fell
An unspeakably beautiful song, with a few discordant notes to counterpoint
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
If not for the girl groups, there would probably be no #Beatles. Please Mr. Postman shows how their rock and roll aggression fused with beautiful harmonies and earnest devotion to create something wholly new beatles208.substack.com/p/60-please…
beatles208.substack.com
60. Please Mr. Postman
If not for the girl groups, there would probably be no Beatles
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Norwegian Wood is a template for a lifetime of musical discovery. Every time I experience that jolt of delight at encountering some new song, I'm hearing an echo of it. beatles208.substack.com/p/61-norweg…
beatles208.substack.com
61. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
This song changed my life
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The entire state government of California is a parable about how giving people more opportunities to vote on something is not, in fact, the same thing as making your political system more democratic.
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Revolution infuriated the political left in 1968, but its uncertainty has aged better than many of John's later, more strident political declarations beatles208.substack.com/p/67-revolu…
beatles208.substack.com
67. Revolution
A revolutionary song about the dangers of revolution
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It Won't Be Long takes the melodrama of the girl-group sound and turns it into a rock and roll thunderclap. The #Beatles didn't keep any ironic distance from that emotional intensity. They gave themselves over to it completely beatles208.substack.com/p/75-it-won…
beatles208.substack.com
75. It Won't Be Long
A girl-group inspired potboiler that turns melodrama into a rock and roll classic
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
At the start of the most astonishing scene in Peter Jackson's Get Back, Paul has nothing. Less than four minutes later, John has arrived, the whole band is playing, and a number-one single has sprung into existence before our eyes beatles208.substack.com/p/80-get-ba…
beatles208.substack.com
80. Get Back
What a gift to be able to watch the birth of a number one hit
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I do basically agree that people are too invested in identity=electability arguments. But ‘you can win if you’re a generational political talent (running against an unpopular war and a financial collapse)’ does not prove very much.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
No, the conclusion should be that these are two different candidates, running for two different jobs, against two different opposing candidates, who are therefore differentiated in many different ways. SMH
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Can't Buy Me Love is probably the least intrinsically-interesting of the #Beatles 1964 mega-hits, but it's a perfect avatar for their year of world domination beatles208.substack.com/p/91-cant-bu...
beatles208.substack.com
91. Can't Buy Me Love
The relentless enthusiasm of Paul McCartney and the peak of Beatlemania
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
George wrote Love You To only a few months after picking up the sitar, which remains one of the most impossible facts in a #Beatles story full of impossible facts beatles208.substack.com/p/93-love-you-to
beatles208.substack.com
93. Love You To
George wrote this song just a few months after picking up the sitar. That is every bit as impossible as it sounds
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Joe Patrice @joepatrice.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
The problem with voter ID laws is that white people are NOT overconfident. It's a "velvet rope regime" where white people's shoddy ID will be "good enough" and Black people's identical ID gets scrutinized and votes possibly thrown out by some 2020 election denialist running a local board.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
A petition is going viral demanding Charles III use his powers as King to resurrect John Lennon and George Harrison and reunite the Beatles.
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Getting Better might be the perfect entry point into the John/Paul partnership: Paul's optimism and John's realism sharpening each other into something neither could have made alone beatles208.substack.com/p/96-getting-better
beatles208.substack.com
96. Getting Better
It's time to take 'Lennon/McCartney' seriously, and literally
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Brutal from Argentina, of course, but also pretty impressive for Spain to only accumulate 1.2 xG from all those shots
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Mike Goodman @themlg.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
The degree to which the nastiness in the Michigan senate primary exploded the minute Platner dropped out in Maine sure suggests that the most prominent issue at play here is that a bunch of assholes [factional definition neutral] need something to do.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Pretty funny that they finally moved on from Southgate and then played the most Southgate game that ever Southgated
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Always feels a bit like Digne is just some guy who won a contest where the prize was you get to play for the national team.
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
As a teenager, Paul wrote Michelle to try to pick up girls. It ended up being one of their most popular and enduring hits beatles208.substack.com/p/98-michelle
beatles208.substack.com
98. Michelle
Straddling the line between parody and sincerity, Michelle is a perfect and somewhat inexplicable gem
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
In the past three weeks, my five year old has discovered that goals often don’t end up counting and now says it doesn’t feel good to clap when they just ‘get taken away.’ Thanks VAR
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
The Ballad of John and Yoko was their final UK #1, a fact that seems unbelievable no matter how many times I say it. Great song, but one that feels much more like a Plastic Ono Band cut than a #Beatles chart-topper beatles208.substack.com/p/104-the-ba...
beatles208.substack.com
104. The Ballad of John and Yoko
The Ballad of John and Paul and John and Yoko
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Girl is a wistful ode to an imagined love, in the form of an almost-perfect presaging of John's feelings for Yoko beatles208.substack.com/p/103-girl
beatles208.substack.com
103. Girl
A song about a dream girl--whose perfection is defined by her casual indifference
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
The US spent two decades as plucky overachievers. Interesting change of pace for them to now be a pretty good team who absolutely wilted under the bright lights.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
It was a very Bluesky-Brain thing for people to assume that the world was rooting against the US in the World Cup (when in fact global football fans were reasonably warm to the USMNT. Except it turns out the Bluesky Brainers were kind of right after all.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
What on earth is happening in Mexico City. This is just nonstop madness
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Giving me flashbacks to Scotland 3-3 Argentina at the 2019 World Cup, which was possibly even more bonkers of an ending.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Football, bloody hell.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
My most old-man-yells-at-cloud football opinion is that holding up your arm for an offside call while the ball is in play should be a bookable offense
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
The Fool on the Hill is a beautiful song about the haunting isolation of wisdom beatles208.substack.com/p/107-the-fo...
beatles208.substack.com
107. The Fool on the Hill
Paul gets philosophical about the burdens of being human
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
I'm not saying that Charles Manson correctly divined the meaning. But still, his madness did expose an element of truth here. Helter Skelter really is a shockingly violent song.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
My principled stance is that refs need to assign more red cards regardless of intent. Dangerous play is dangerous. My biased fan stance is that this is the greatest travesty in the history of the World Cup.
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
The fight for third-place qualification turned out as good as you could possibly hope for, but playing 70 games to eliminate 16/48 teams is ridiculous. Expand to 64 imo.
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
When I'm Sixty-Four isn't a critical favorite, but I think it's actually one of the most compelling (and subversive) songs on Sgt. Pepper beatles208.substack.com/p/109-when-i...
beatles208.substack.com
109. When I'm Sixty-Four
Paul singing a song at 26 that he wrote at 16 in a style that was popular when he was 6 about being 64
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The McCartney Pastiche is its own amazing genre. He's earnest, empathetic, engaged: fully committed to making the song a genuine version of itself, while still injecting his own unique personality into every experiment.
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
It was written looking backward, toward the music that HIS mother might have known. But it lives on today as a song that still delights kids who are now almost six full decades removed
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
When I was a teenager and #Beatles obsessive, Real Love was the closest I ever got to experiencing my favorite band as a real living thing beatles208.substack.com/p/113-real-l...
beatles208.substack.com
113. Real Love
Of all the new Beatles songs, this one sounds the most like The Beatles. For better and for worse
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Because is one of the most beautiful #Beatles songs, but one that I've never quite been able to love. Perhaps that's because the song itself evokes feelings that seem to exceed the human experience beatles208.substack.com/p/114-because
beatles208.substack.com
114. Because
Ethereal harmonies that feel like they might just stretch out to infinity
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Lennon and McCartney are famously among the most gifted songwriters in history, but they spent years as a cover band before ever writing any of their own hits. That's not a coincidence.
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
P.S. I Love You commemorates a very literal thing that happened: the #Beatles writing letters back home to their fans while they were in Hamburg open.substack.com/pub/beatles2...
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116. P.S. I Love You
This soppy little love song actually defines a critical, and transformational moment in the history of the Beatles
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Charles Olney @olneyce.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Would you like to guess which of these two teams Ian Darke and Landon Donovan think are playing exceptionally well and which one is embarrassed at their performance?
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
John Lennon called Run For Your Life his least favorite Beatles song. But the song's flaws are also part of what make it worth examining and (maybe) celebrating open.substack.com/pub/beatles2...
open.substack.com
120. Run For Your Life
Can we get past the misogyny? Should we try to get past the misogyny?
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Finding lifelong joy in a 23 second song fragment open.substack.com/pub/beatles2...
open.substack.com
119. Her Majesty
A final bit of impossible serendipity to conclude a decade of perfect accidents
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Brian had plenty of flaws, and he messed up quite a few things on the business side. But I truly believe there was no other person on earth who could have done more to lift the #Beatles to the highest heights
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
It's amazing just how many songs John wrote from 62-65 about how women were doing him wrong. Of course, these were songs, not personal diaries, but there's definitely still something of the confessional in them
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite is John doing his best to write like Paul, and provides an extraordinary of what made the whole Sgt. Pepper experience so exciting open.substack.com/pub/beatles2...
open.substack.com
124. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
John writes in the style of Paul, and places a tentpole that holds up the entire premise of Sgt. Pepper
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
I'll Get You is about as close as you get to a 'generic' #Beatles song, which might sound like criticism but is actually high praise open.substack.com/pub/beatles2...
open.substack.com
123. I'll Get You
One of the songs that invented 'the Beatles' sound
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
One of the defining sounds of the early #Beatles was John's double-tracked vocals. I Should Have Known Better might be the apotheosis of that effect open.substack.com/pub/beatles2...
open.substack.com
129. I Should Have Known Better
Joyfulness in song, but it all really comes down to how you feel about the double-tracked vocals
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Oh That Magic Feeling @beatles208.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
The Inner Light is a very performative song, in the Austinian sense, where it actively DOES the thing that it's describing
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