Do you know what song ties The Beatles, John Lennon, Billy Joel, Goodfeelas, and Tik Tok?
In 1977, John Lennon recorded a demo of the song Free as a Bird.
Here it is remastered with AI (hey, I didn’t do it):
Now listen to this song by The Shangri-Las (15-year-old Billy Joel is thought to have played piano on it):
I know this song because it appears in the movie Goodfellas:
That’s where I first realized Free as a Bird quotes this song, which you can really tell in the re-recorded version with the rest of The Beatles (the part where it says “whatever happened to…”
Turns out, there’s also an Aerosmith version:
In 2005, Capone sampled The Shangri-las version:
Which was sampled by Kreepa:
Which is the source for its use in many a TikTok video:
Stephen Quirk 