Ink Tea Stone Leaf

Welcome back, readers from last week (and welcome anew, readers starting here). In my previous post about listening to the Beatles with intention, I wrote about the necessary context for understanding the band’s music. I discussed the way the Beatles functioned as a musical unit, the way their best-known compilation albums present their material and career as a kind of narrative, and the nature of the influence on the Beatles by musicians as diverse as Chuck Berry and Karlheinz Stockhausen. That first post, to be sure, is soaking in context.

There is always more to be said about the historical context of the Beatles, because there is always more to say about history. We could talk about the complex relationship between the band and the British political establishment, or the economic situation of post-World War II Liverpool, or the juxtaposition of the assassination of John F. Kennedy with the Beatles’ first U.S. tour, or the widespread availability of LSD and its impact on musical culture, or the civil rights movement and the roots of second wave feminism, or the politics of the Cold War, the arms race and the space race and the war in Vietnam. However, having laid down the musical context, I’d like to jump now into the heart of the Beatles’ music: the thirteen canonical studio albums.

The Beatles’ discography prior to the CD era was highly variable by country. In the U.K., where they were signed to the Parlophone label (a division of EMI), they released twelve full-length albums of (mostly) original recordings before breaking up. In the U.S., Capitol Records shuffled the track lists of the albums, and reduced the number of songs per disc, in order to combine the leftover songs with non-album singles to produce more albums (it depends on what you count, but the number is closer to twenty than twelve). Several of the U.S. albums have names that don’t resemble their British counterparts, while others (A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver) were subject to the reshuffling described. By 1967 the Beatles were able to insist that their albums be issued exactly as intended in all countries, so that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be were issued identically across all borders.

When it came time to reissue the discography on CD, it was decided to treat the British album releases as canonical, while the songs not found on those albums were collected onto Past Masters. The only exception was a single U.S. album, Magical Mystery Tour. In the U.K., these songs had been issued as various non-album singles and a special double-EP release, as the soundtrack to a film of the same name. Rather than cramming another eleven songs onto Past Masters, the U.S. format was retroactively included in the list of albums, bringing the total to thirteen.

I have only listened to two of the U.S.-only albums (Beatles ’65 and the American Rubber Soul) and none of the albums issued only in other countries. It has been argued that several of the U.S. albums are actually superior to their British equivalents, and given my small sample size I can only shrug and say “sure, if you like them that way; it’s all the same songs in the end.” There are minor differences between the songs, just as there exist some differences between mono and stereo releases, and the various remixes and remasters that have come out since the standardization. I’m not getting into all of that—I only want to talk about the thirteen albums that are presently considered standard, because I know them best and they are the most accessible to anybody who might be reading this with their app of choice open to explore.

The Studio Albums

There are any number of orders in which you might listen to the studio albums; I’m not actually sure in what order I first collected them, though the first may have been Abbey Road. I will be presenting them chronologically, in order to comment on developments as they arose.

Why the Beatles were so popular so soon is not easy to explain. “Beatlemania” was a cultural phenomenon that went much further than the popularity of a handful of songs. Only a few people in the history of pop music have achieved anything similar in scale, and it is always debatable to which those performers were actually that much better than their peers. The Beatles divided established opinion in their early years, but even from the start it was clear that, by prioritizing their own compositions and taking a direct hand in how they were presented, they had artistic ambitions as well as commercial ones

One commonly expressed opinion is that the Beatles’ early music is not interesting or enjoyable for serious listeners, while later albums (generally from Rubber Soul onward) are acceptable fare. I don’t share this opinion for several reasons, the most important of which is that it seems unlikely that a group could go from making artistically empty music to masterpieces in three or four years. I respect the music the Beatles made from 1962-1965 because I respect the roots of it, as I discussed in the last post; furthermore, I do not (or at least I try not to) denigrate music based on the fact that it’s popular, or who exactly it is popular with. There is a continuity from the early foundations to the later achievements that is satisfying to experience.

The most important continuity to observe is the development of “the album” as a meaningful artistic statement, particularly in popular music. The Beatles did not invent this concept, but nevertheless Please Please Me was released in early 1963 into a market where pop albums were usually formats for collecting hit singles and filler songs which were simply not expected to be all that good. You bought an album because you liked the group’s vibe and didn’t mind spending a half hour or so with them, not because you wanted to critically evaluate every track. On that score, the first few Beatles albums go above and beyond what was expected of them. Their celebrated artistry took a few years to gain prominence, but it was there from the beginning if you know where to look.

Please Please Me (1963)

• I Saw Her Standing There
• Misery
• Anna (Go to Him)
• Chains
• Boys
• Ask Me Why
• Please Please Me
• Love Me Do
• P.S. I Love You
• Baby It’s You
• Do You Want to Know a Secret
• A Taste of Honey
• There’s a Place
• Twist and Shout

Album number one was famously recorded in a single day, although it would technically be more accurate to say that about 70% of it was recorded on the day in question: tracks 6-9 were the four sides of the two singles released the previous year (all Lennon–McCartney songs). Of the remaining ten songs, four were originals and six were covers; all were songs the Beatles performed regularly on stage (so they knew them well enough to record quickly), and reflect the kinds of songs the Beatles themselves enjoyed, and the kinds they felt made for a compelling show. It begins and ends with straight rock and roll, and in between are slower and mid-tempo songs with some rocking punches, so the pace of the music is never monotonous.

Not all of the originals are especially memorable, or necessarily better than the covers: “Boys,” a song by the girl group the Shirelles, is a high energy standout sung by Ringo, while John obliterates his voice (he struggled through a bad sore throat on recording day) putting his all into the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout.” “Please Please Me” is great fun and may or may not be way more sexual than you’d think would be allowed back in those days.

“I Saw Her Standing There” sometimes receives negative scrutiny for its opening lines (“she was just seventeen/you know what I mean”), and there is a lot that can be said about the idealization of youthful beauty in popular music, the age of the Beatles themselves at the time, the normalization of relationships between teenage girls and older men, and the fact that music like this was marketed primarily to a teenage audience; your discourse can go all over the place if you want it to. In any event, it’s a great song, and an excellent musical introduction to the album.

With the Beatles (1963)

• It Won’t Be Long
• All I’ve Got to Do
• All My Loving
• Don’t Bother Me
• Little Child
• Till There Was You
• Please Mr. Postman
• Roll Over Beethoven
• Hold Me Tight
• You Really Got a Hold on Me
• I Wanna Be Your Man
• Devil in Her Heart
• Not a Second Time
• Money (That’s What I Want)

The more serious album cover primes you for a more serious experience, but the second album is a lot like the first: the same proportion of originals and covers, the same rock and roll beginning and ending. The covers are generally better than on Please Please Me, while the originals are more of a mixed bag. “All My Loving” is the best original song here; Paul’s vocal melody is excellent, John plays an incredible rhythm guitar throughout, and George’s guitar solo and harmony singing are flawless.

George Harrison sang only one lead vocal on Please Please Me, but he gets three here: two covers (the song that used to be called “Devil in His Heart,” by the Donays, was almost totally obscure before the Beatles covered it) and his first composition, “Don’t Bother Me.” It’s not as melodic as Beatles songs tend to be, but it’s a milestone for him.

Arguably, the Motown covers are the best songs on this album, with “Money” serving as a very strong closer. The lyrics of “Little Child,” again, are extremely suspicious from a critical perspective, but unfortunately still not that unusual for the time. It’s not nearly as good as “I Saw Her Standing There,” though.

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

• A Hard Day’s Night
• I Should Have Known Better
• If I Fell
• I’m Happy Just to Dance With You
• And I Love Her
• Tell Me Why
• Can’t Buy Me Love
• Any Time At All
• I’ll Cry Instead
• Things We Said Today
• When I Get Home
• You Can’t Do That
• I’ll Be Back

The definitive Beatlemania album, the soundtrack of the definitive Beatlemania movie of the same name. All of the songs are originals, though George wrote none of them and only gets one lead vocal. A Hard Day’s Night feels like the album that Lennon–McCartney had wanted to write from the beginning, as the songs are all generally a step above their first two albums. They each contribute a pair of spectacularly beautiful ballads (“If I Fell” and “And I Love Her”), and the rest of the tracks are generally lean and fast, guitar-forward and musically adventurous. This album is so wild and fun that it puts the lie to the notion that the Beatles aren’t worth listening to before Rubber Soul.

It is, however, an album that caters strongly to the band’s youthful, romantic fan base. The songs are all about being in love in one way or another, though a highlight track, “You Can’t Do That,” introduces a hot streak of jealousy that might give pause as to John Lennon’s intentions, even if it is incredible rock and roll. The thing is that at this stage, rock was youth music, and the idea of mature, adult rock stars seemed contradictory. The emotions on this album vary, but they are painted mostly in primary colors.

My least favorite track is “When I Get Home;” I simply cannot take seriously the line “I’m gonna love her ’til the cows come home.” I don’t know what John should have written instead, just not that.

Oddly, this album has one fewer song than usual, and does not have a song for Ringo to sing. It also ends on a wistful ballad rather than a rocker, which gives the whole experience a very different feel; perhaps the first hint of a real maturity in the Beatles’ music.

Beatles for Sale (1964)

• No Reply
• I’m a Loser
• Baby’s in Black
• Rock and Roll Music
• I’ll Follow the Sun
• Mr. Moonlight
• Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!
• Eight Days A Week
• Words of Love
• Honey Don’t
• Every Little Thing
• I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party
• What You’re Doing
• Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby

The presence of two Carl Perkins songs and a Buddy Holly song, along with the style and tone of most of John Lennon’s leads, make it tempting to call this the Beatles’ country and western album. It might have been better if they’d committed to that idea from the beginning, because it also feels like an album that was recorded mostly because another album was expected before the end of the year.

Most of the covers are good, even very good (though I can do without “Mr. Moonlight” in my life), but the fact that there are six of them makes this more of a return to the Please Please Me model than a development of A Hard Day’s Night. The Lennon–McCartney songs do seem to be striving for something more, with John sounding particularly impatient for more self-expression on the first three tracks. However, it takes more than a touch of introspection and honky-tonk guitar to make a whole album really come to life. Beatles For Sale suffers by comparison to most other Beatles albums, but the songwriting and performances it offers are still pretty good.

Help! (1965)

• Help!
• The Night Before
• You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
• I Need You
• Another Girl
• You’re Going to Lose That Girl
• Ticket to Ride
• Act Naturally
• It’s Only Love
• You Like Me Too Much
• Tell Me What You See
• I’ve Just Seen a Face
• Yesterday
• Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Help! is another album that was shaped by a hard deadline, as it served to promote the second Beatles movie. The band was much more successful this time in gathering the number of original songs needed for a new release, thanks in part to George Harrison contributing two songs of his own (his first since “Don’t Bother Me,” and both quite a bit better than that song). There are only two covers, and they sound more like fun excursions than stopgaps.

The quality of the songwriting here has advanced again, as is the stylistic diversity. “Help!” would not sound too musically out of place on A Hard Day’s Night, but lyrically it is in another world, addressing insecurity and depression rather than romantic yearning. The rest of the songs are all basically love-centric, but they are more inventive in sounds and arrangements than before. “I Need You” uses a wah-wah peddle guitar effect to create a mournful sound, while “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” has a prominent flute part, and the heartbreaking “Yesterday” is backed by a string quartet (arranged by producer George Martin); all of these things were novel to the Beatles’ audience and were taken as signs of growing sophistication.

One of the best songs is “Ticket to Ride,” a very heavy (by 1965 standards) twelve-bar blues which anticipates the sound of the Beatles in 1966, the year they recorded what might be their “coolest” music. A lot of the improvements around this time coincide with the Beatles’ access to better equipment, particularly multi-track recording machines which allowed them to mix instruments with greater precision and clarity. They hadn’t yet realized the potential of what they could achieve with multi-tracking, but “Ticket to Ride” shows the way.

Rubber Soul (1965)

• Drive My Car
• Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
• You Won’t See Me
• Nowhere Man
• Think For Yourself
• The Word
• Michelle
• What Goes On
• Girl
• I’m Looking Through You
• In My Life
• Wait
• If I Needed Someone
• Run For Your Life

This is the moment, when it officially becomes safe for sophisticated twenty-first century listeners to enjoy the music of the Beatles. It was actually always fine, but Rubber Soul really is an astonishing leap forward, functioning not only as a collection of great songs, but as a manifesto regarding what albums of the future were going to be.

Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison were all writing at a higher level than before, bringing philosophical insights and mature emotions even to lyrics that were ostensibly about love (and lyrics that had nothing to do with it), while sharpening their sense of humor and bearing down on their eclecticism. The sitar makes its first appearance on “Norwegian Wood,” the best poetry in a Beatles lyric to date; a piano solo is recorded slowly for “In My Life,” and then sped up to sound like a harpsichord; “Think For Yourself” features a lead guitar part that is actually played on a bass guitar fed through a fuzz box.

Rubber Soul has been called a “folk rock” album and it sort of is, although the group had been incorporating acoustic guitar and other country/folk-y sounds into their music for a while (and Rubber Soul is mostly electric). What the contemporary press meant by “folk rock” was music with the authenticity and intellectual heft of folk music, yet retaining the energy and entertainment value of conventional rock and roll. Essentially, this was the point where the Beatles seemed to deliver on the promise that the commercial music of the younger generation could produce undeniable works of art, squaring the circle in a way that seemed effortless.

Ringo Starr (“Richard Starkey”) gets his first songwriting credit, contributing to “What Goes On.” I have no idea how much of it he actually wrote, but his name is on it.

My most skipped song on Rubber Soul is “Run For Your Life,” a song that takes John’s jealous guy persona from “You Can’t Do That” and escalates to violent misogyny by riffing on a notorious line from Elvis Presley’s “Baby Let’s Play House.” It was the most disconcerting song the band had yet recorded, even if its musical quality is on par with the rest of the album; disconcerting enough even to throw a lot of their earlier lyrics about male/female dynamics into a less favorable light. I feel that Rubber Soul works just as well if it ends with the magnificent twelve-string guitars of “If I Needed Someone.”

Revolver (1966)

• Taxman
• Eleanor Rigby
• I’m Only Sleeping
• Love You To
• Here, There, and Everywhere
• Yellow Submarine
• She Said She Said
• Good Day Sunshine
• And Your Bird Can Sing
• For No One
• Doctor Robert
• I Want to Tell You
• Got to Get You into My Life
• Tomorrow Never Knows

Sometimes, this is my favorite Beatles album. It was the first to be freed from the commercial imperative of releasing two albums a year, allowing the songs extra room to flower in the studio. It has the highest percentage of tracks authored by George Harrison (3/14, or just over 21%), and his songs are all excellent. The guitars are louder, the bass explodes with new ambition, and the lyrics are unbound by any common subject (only four of them are explicitly about romance in any capacity). With horn sections, string sections, sitars, backwards-recorded guitar solos, sweet harmonies, strange electronic sounds, and the distinct flavor of hallucinogenics, Revolver reflects and represents nearly everything that interested and influenced the group in 1966.

Revolver is the album where it the Beatles discover exactly how daring and strange being the most popular band in the world (with access to cutting edge studio equipment and a production team willing to follow the band’s muses anywhere they led) could allow them to be. If they want to open their album with a sarcastic gripe about tax policy, they can. If they want to end it with a squealing maelstrom of tape loops and acid philosophizing, they can do that too. If Rubber Soul had been a demonstration of what a deliberately cohesive rock album could be, Revolver was a blast of pure artistry. Its sense of cohesion came not from a unifying theme or style, but from the electric chemistry of the band, the thing that had propelled them to stardom in the first place.

The individual Beatles emerge as characters in a musical drama much more clearly than before: the songs of Lennon–McCartney are more decisively Lennon or McCartney, as each pursues his own musicality and lyricism both similar and distinct from their common sensibilities, though they are still able to collaborate effectively. Harrison stands apart as a foil to both of them, demonstrating a sharp wit, unorthodox harmonies, and an inclination toward worldly introspection. Starr is everywhere on the drums, but he emerges from the back to sing what would become one of their most iconic songs: a surreal children’s tune about living with all your friends in a colorful underwater boat. It sounds totally different from everything else on Revolver, but “Yellow Submarine” just about sums the whole thing up.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
• With a Little Help From My Friends
• Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
• Getting Better
• Fixing a Hole
• She’s Leaving Home
• Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
• Within You Without You
• When I’m Sixty-Four
• Lovely Rita
• Good Morning Good Morning
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
• A Day in the Life

Sgt. Pepper is virtually synonymous with psychedelic music, a term evocative of mind-expanding sounds, fantastical and surreal imagery, and a close association with the consumption of psychedelic compounds. It is also considered one of the first rock “concept albums,” although the identity of that concept is tricky to nail down. Essentially it was that the Beatles, who had decided the previous year to stop performing live shows and concentrate only on recording, were no longer the Beatles, but some other band instead: ostensibly a certain colorful collection of brass-wielding soldiers, but really any band except “the Beatles.” Only two or three of the tracks will actively remind you of this; the others just exist within that framing.

Once again the Beatles come across as dramatic characters, but this is arguably the first of their albums to be guided by a single voice: Paul McCartney is not only the principle composer of eight of the thirteen songs (or seven of twelve, if you don’t count the reprise), but the originator of the concept. Most of the rest are by John Lennon, while George Harrison’s writing contribution is down to one: “Within You Without You,” a lengthy exposition of Indian musical instruments and Hindu philosophy. The dynamic had not shifted so far that the spirit of collaboration had died, and Lennon’s smaller showing is balanced by the fact that at least one of his songs, “A Day in the Life,” is an absolute masterpiece. Nevertheless, McCartney’s voice and ever-bolder bass guitar are conspicuous throughout, while the others sometimes seem to be merely along for the ride.

On this album, the Beatles only heighten their association with avant-garde aesthetics, appropriate for a project with such modernist self-referentiality. “A Day in the Life” would be a grandly beautiful piano ballad if played straight, but it contains a slow-motion explosion of chaotic orchestral sound which elevates the music to the highest level, while making no musical sense of its own. John fills many of his lyrics with references to random articles from the newspaper; the words of one song (“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”) are derived almost entirely from ad copy found on an antique circus poster (and are backed by a collage of bright circus music that must be heard to be believed). Nearly every song contains instrumental sounds that can only exist as a consequence of extensive acoustic and electronic manipulation, layered and arranged and produced in such a way as to invoke surprise and awe. It is not easy to describe all of the things that you might hear if you listen very closely to Sgt. Pepper.

Taken as a whole, the album is a feast, impossibly rich with sound and flavor. The individual songs are often beautiful, sometimes magnificent, and usually a lot of fun, especially Ringo’s “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The drumming throughout Sgt. Pepper is particularly excellent, as Ringo finds incredibly creative ways to propel the most unusual songs he’d ever played.

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

• Magical Mystery Tour
• The Fool on the Hill
• Flying
• Blue Jay Way
• Your Mother Should Know
• I Am the Walrus
• Hello Goodbye
• Strawberry Fields Forever
• Penny Lane
• Baby You’re a Rich Man
• All You Need is Love

Structurally, this album is composed of two pieces (all vinyl records are, but bear with me). The first six songs are the soundtrack of a Beatle-centric film of the same name, originally released as a pair of EPs. The last five songs are the five sides of the band’s three most-recent-at-the-time non-album singles (the B-Side of “Hello Goodbye” was “I Am the Walrus,” one of the EP songs). As the Beatles usually selected quality tracks for their singles, side two is consequently very strong, if a little short. The pair of “Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane” in particular is iconic, two of the definitive songs of the Beatles’ psychedelic period, brimming with sound and experimentation.

As for the EP side, once again McCartney was the inciting force behind a concept, which can be pretty much summed up by the title. Lennon has only one song, “I Am the Walrus,” though his voice predominates on the singles side, and Harrison has “Blue Jay Way.” For this project, each of the three has differing aesthetic takes on psychedelia: Paul is wistful and childlike, George is smoky and mysterious, and John is a font of delirious nonsense poetry. “Walrus” is the most compelling and dramatic song on side one, a symphony of strings, distortion, sound effects, and the incorporation of a radio play of King Lear that happened to be on the air that day. Paul’s songs don’t even reach for that level of bizarre-ness, but the title song is a tour de force, and his gift for a beautiful melody is undeniable, especially with “The Fool on the Hill.”

Ringo Starr has no vocal here, except for wordless harmonies with the others on “Flying,” otherwise a supremely relaxed instrumental. It’s also his second Beatles writing credit, shared with the other three.

The Beatles (1968)

• Back in the U.S.S.R.
• Dear Prudence
• Glass Onion
• Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
• Wild Honey Pie
• The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Happiness is a Warm Gun
• Martha My Dear
• I’m So Tired
• Blackbird
• Piggies
• Rocky Raccoon
• Don’t Pass Me By
• Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?
• I Will
• Julia
• Birthday
• Yer Blues
• Mother Nature’s Son
• Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
• Sexy Sadie
• Helter Skelter
• Long, Long, Long
• Revolution 1
• Honey Pie
• Savoy Truffle
• Cry Baby Cry
• Revolution 9
• Good Night

Sometimes this is my favorite Beatles album. If 1967 had been the year of McCartney’s ascendance, the famous journey to study transcendental meditation in India of early 1968 led to a massive resurgence of songwriting from all of the other members, and the subsequent inevitability of a double album. It has the highest number of George Harrison compositions at four (though that only amounts to 4/30, or 13% of the whole). It is wildly experimental but much starker-sounding than Sgt. Pepper, with lyrics that are more overtly political, sexual, satirical, and heartfelt than ever before. Unfortunately it is also a mess, and its recording engendered deep wounds in the Beatles’ relationships.

Recording The Beatles (this is the one they call the “White Album,” for its plain white cover) was often like recording three or four simultaneous solo projects. Paul McCartney brought the band a few high-energy rock songs to record, but also spent a lot of time working on off-beat genre experiments and ballads, which he sometimes recorded nearly or completely by himself. John Lennon, in concert with his new partner the avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, leaned into politics, abstract poetry, and highly personal self-expression, both raw and tender. George Harrison adopted a grandly spiritual posture in two songs, while in his other two allotments he satirized politics and personal foibles. Ringo Starr finally produced his own solo composition, a country and western tune called “Don’t Pass Me By,” and sang a second lead vocal on the album-closing lullaby written by John. Arguments over studio time and resources were frequent, and the final track list, when broken out across four record sides, reads like a carefully negotiated custody agreement: one Ringo song per disc, one George song per side, no more than two songs in a row by either John or Paul.

Musically, The Beatles is less in line with contemporary pop than any other Beatles album. Instead they follow their various inclinations through hard rock, ska, music hall, blues, folk, and general weirdness. Messing around with a particularly unhinged take of John’s “Revolution 1” (a song that was later rerecorded as simply “Revolution”) turned into a massive sound collage called “Revolution 9,” the peak of the Beatles’ experiments in the avant-garde and a track which it is extremely tempting to skip. In the meantime, Paul aimed to write and record the heaviest rock song in the Beatles catalog, an effort which produced the chaos of “Helter Skelter.” However, both John and Paul also wrote gentler songs like “Dear Prudence,” “Martha My Dear,” “Julia,” and “Mother Nature’s Son.” There’s no accounting for the contradictions of The Beatles; it is the group’s most challenging album, as well as their funniest, scariest, and most revealing.

Yellow Submarine (1969)

• Yellow Submarine
• Only a Northern Song
• All Together Now
• Hey Bulldog
• It’s All Too Much
• All You Need Is Love
• Pepperland
• Sea of Time
• Sea of Holes
• Sea of Monsters
• March of the Meanies
• Pepperland Laid Waste
• Yellow Submarine in Pepperland

Yellow Submarine is a Beatles studio album, they say; but it only contains four new songs by the band, and seven orchestral pieces by George Martin from the animated movie. To be honest, I’ve never listened to the second half: the version that I have is a reissue from 1999 called “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” and consists of fifteen Beatles songs that appear in the movie. I’ve never seen the whole movie, either; maybe I ought to go do that when I’m done writing this.

Are the four new songs (and Martin’s pieces) worth it? Maybe; “Hey Bulldog” and “It’s All Too Much” are hard to do without. This album is basically the last gasp of the psychedelic era, but it is a partly triumphant gasp.

Abbey Road (1969)

• Come Together
• Something
• Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
• Oh! Darling
• Octopus’s Garden
• I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
• Here Comes the Sun
• Because
• You Never Give Me Your Money
• Sun King
• Mean Mr. Mustard
• Polythene Pam
• She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
• Golden Slumbers
• Carry That Weight
• The End
• Her Majesty

The Beatles, as a team, did not survive Abbey Road. Some of it was made without John Lennon’s participation, and everybody involved was certain that it would be their last major production. Nevertheless they had the songs, and enough residual goodwill and mutual respect to not only present them well, but try one last major artistic experiment.

George Harrison has two songs here, “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” two of his most beautiful works and showcases for his incredible growth as a guitarist. Ringo Starr has another solo composition, “Octopus’s Garden,” because the underwater thing really works for him, and it’s a much better song than “Don’t Pass Me By.” John and Paul both contributed more of the kinds of songs they’d written for The Beatles (hard rock and blues, abstract poetry, goofy character sketches), though each seemed to be taking a new interest in things classical; “Because” is based on the chord progression of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, while the lyrics of “Golden Slumbers” are by the 17th century poet Thomas Dekker.

Paul and George Martin took the lead in turning most of side two into a medley, sixteen minutes long, which approximates a miniature symphony of songs (some of them fragmentary) flowing into one another, climaxing in a final instrumental movement wherein the four Beatles trade dramatic electric guitar and drum solos and sing a famous closing couplet in harmony. If everything from “You Never Give Me Your Money” onward were considered a single song, it would be one of the most epic recordings in rock history—and the hidden track “Her Majesty” would be the punch line, resolving the grandeur with a moment of light silliness.

Let It Be (1970)

• Two of Us
• Dig a Pony
• Across the Universe
• I Me Mine
• Dig It
• Let It Be
• Maggie Mae
• I’ve Got a Feeling
• One After 909
• The Long and Winding Road
• For You Blue
• Get Back

This is the anticlimax of the Beatles’ career. In early 1969, the band attempted to reinvigorate their creativity by writing and recording an album of new songs without the excessive studio overdubbing they’d grown accustomed to, focused on the classic rock and roll sounds they had started with. They filmed the rehearsals and recording sessions and planned a television special around a big performance, and gave themselves impossible deadlines which they mostly failed to meet; they had time to record a whole new album in their conventional fashion (Abbey Road) before the thing that became Let It Be was allowed into the light.

Most of the preparation for this album was difficult, and suffered from a lack of organization even when the Beatles seemed to be having a good time. The most exciting event turned out to be a surprise concert played on the roof of their studio in central London, which was filmed as part of the accompanying movie and provided a dramatic conclusion when the police came to shut them down. Some of the rock songs officially released on the album (“Dig a Pony,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and “One After 909”) were actually recorded live on the roof, while “Get Back” was disguised with audio clips from the movie to sound like it had been. These songs benefit immensely from the resulting air of mischief.

The trouble was with the softer songs. Producer Phil Spector was hired to finish the production of Let It Be, and he largely ignored the original intention to avoid overdubs, applying generous helpings of orchestral strings and choir vocals to “Across the Universe,” “I Me Mine,” “Let It Be,” and “The Long and Winding Road.” This became intensely divisive among fans and was specifically disavowed by Paul McCartney. The decision to leave out “Don’t Let Me Down,” a prominent song from the sessions and the rooftop show, is also highly questionable, especially given the album’s short length and the inclusion of “Dig It” (which isn’t really a song) and “Maggie Mae” (a snippet of Liverpool folk). However, the inclusion of audio clips from the movie (mostly John joking around) does give Let It Be a sort of comic charm, even if it stands as the least well-executed album in the catalog.

Additional Listening

What, you thought that was all? There’s way more Beatles music that you could listen to, if you want to. It’s mostly the same songs that we’ve already talked about, but they do some interesting things with them! Briefly, here are some additional albums of interest for those who find themselves hooked:

Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1977, 2016)

The only official concert album by the Beatles, though clips of other live shows and TV appearances are plentiful online. It combines songs from two shows from 1964 and 1965. Unfortunately, the original album is hard to listen to, with the never-ending screams of Beatlemaniacs to contend with. The remastered version from 2016 (produced by Giles Martin, son of George) is much cleaner sounding, and has more songs; it accompanied a documentary about the touring years called Eight Days a Week, which is worth watching to understand the phenomenon-within-a-phenomenon which was the Beatles live shows.

Live at the BBC (1994, 2013)

Live at the BBC and its sequel, On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2, are compilations of radio broadcast performances that were made from about 1963-1965. I haven’t actually listened to them through (yet) because I’m a fake fan (lawl), but there are lots of interesting alternate versions of well known songs, and if you’re really into the Beatles’ rock and roll covers you’ll find even more of them here, along with some on-air goofing around.

The Beatles Anthology (1995, 1996)

A set of three compilation albums, accompanying a documentary and a book and all sorts of things. Most of the tracks are demos (including rare recordings from the Quarrymen, the teenage band that became the Beatles), live performances, outtakes and alternate versions, and otherwise unreleased songs like “What’s the New Mary Jane.” They also feature two “new” songs, a pair of John Lennon demos called “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” treated to overdubbed instruments by the other three Beatles. These songs are pretty darn good, although the disparity in quality between the lead vocal and the rest of the sound is jarring. Another demo, “Now and Then” (the so-called last Beatles song), was also worked on for Anthology but not finished until 2023, when new technology could effectively separate John’s voice from the noise on the tape.

Personally, I don’t think my collection would be complete without Anthology. It’s a very accessible way to get under the hood of the Beatles’ recording process and experience their chronology, but it is best listened to if you know the songs already.

Let It Be…Naked (2003)

This was the first “new” Beatles album I ever bought (they have been somewhat scarce in my lifetime). Essentially, this is McCartney’s revenge on Spector, expunging Let It Be of (almost) all of his overdubs, reinserting “Don’t Let Me Down,” and remixing everything to present the songs as something closer to the original concept of an unadorned roots rock album. It is mostly the superior version of Let It Be, although I have the reservation that I am not convinced that some of Spector’s mixes for the rooftop rock songs aren’t better.

Love (2006)

Before George Harrison died in 2001, he had been friends with Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, and out of this friendship emerged the notion of a Cirque production that incorporated Beatles music. Meanwhile, in 2004, Danger Mouse released a version of Jay-Z’s Black Album with extensive sampling (a “mash-up,” if you will) from the Beatle’s White Album, known as the Grey Album (naturally), which caused a sensation and legal controversy (and is also worth listening to, though I don’t know how accessible it is these days). Most things that I’ve read about the development of Love don’t mention the Grey Album, but you’ll have to take my word for it that at the time, comparisons were indeed made.

The idea behind the soundtrack of the Love show is to mash-up the Beatles with themselves, taking a song and sampling fragments of vocals, riffs, drums, and effects from other songs into them. If you know the songs already, the effect is like listening to the Beatles as a kaleidoscopic fever dream. Most of the really wild mashing happens in the first half, while the songs toward the end tend to be played straighter. Probably the most iconic “new” song from Love is a smooth integration of “Within You Without You” with the drum beat and other elements of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” a combination that is positively cosmic. There’s also a tiny bit of newly recorded music amid all the samples, too: a beautiful strings arrangement by George Martin, to accompany the original demo of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Incidentally, this was the last Beatles production overseen by George Martin before his death. His son Giles co-produced, and (as noted above) has since inherited the role of overseeing all the new mixes and deluxe editions and what have you that have been released since then. I believe that Giles has been good for the Beatles’ legacy, having really improved the sound of the songs since they were first digitally remastered in the 1980s.