Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Sean Paul Murphy, Writer
Sean Paul Murphy, Storyteller

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Beatles Albums Ranked


I love the Beatles. Their music has always struck an emotional chord with me, wherever I am in my life.  I believe the reason the band is always able to  speak to me is because they went through so many changes themselves. From the harmony-driven rock-n-roll of their first albums to the innovative pop of their mid-period, through their psychedelic experimentation and their return to rock, the Beatles never rested on their laurels. Throughout their career, they all grew as both musicians and songwriters, but each stop along the way offers its own joys. Abbey Road is not inherently better than Please, Please Me. Both albums are excellent in their own rights. They're just different.

My appreciation of the Beatles has only grown over the years. My first artistic love has always been the movies. I wasn't "into" music. I used to say that my taste in music during my teenage years ran the gamut from BA to BE. (The Bach pieces I learned on the piano to, of course, The Beatles.) At first, I really only concentrated on their melodies and lyrics. When I picked up the guitar, I developed a greater appreciation of musically and their use of (minor) 4 chords. When I picked up the bass, I fell in love with McCartney's amazing melodic playing. Now, I find myself concentrating on Ringo's underrated drumming. (I once had a fascinating discussion about Ringo's drumming with the E Street Band's Nils Lofgren, but that's another blog.)

This list is completely subjective, based on my feelings today. Over the years, many albums have risen and fallen in my estimation. For example, during the 1990s, I obsessively listened to the White Album while I commuted to and from New York for work. A few years ago, when I was working for National Geographic, I found myself listening to Let It Be practically every night on my way home. More recently, Help! lingered at the top of my playlist. However, the recent remixes have shuffled my order of preference yet again.

I am only ranking the official Beatles canon. The British versions, many of which where not officially released in the United States until the CDs finally came out. I must confess that my feelings regarding the often haphazard Capitol releases sometimes affects my opinion of the British releases.

Here's the list: (Feel free to disagree.)

13). Yellow Submarine
13 January 1969

Well, when you make a list something has to be on the bottom. Yellow Submarine sadly earns this honor. The Beatles initially had no enthusiasm for their animated feature and the soundtrack became the dumping ground for new songs they felt unworthy of their more serious projects. Personally, I love the songs they dumped here. All Together Now might be an insubstantial sing-a-long, but Hey Bulldog is easily one of their best rockers. Harrison's It's All Too Much might be the most under appreciated track in their entire oeuvre.

So why does the album make the bottom of the list? The lack of new songs. The album only featured four new Beatles tracks, filled out with two previously released singles and producer George Martin's incidental score. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy Martin's score, but it isn't generally what I want to hear when I put on a Beatles album.


Apple has essentially replaced the original album with the Yellow Submarine Songtrack which dumps the George Martin tracks in favor of the other previously released Beatles songs used in the film. As a further enticement to make the switch to the new album, the songs have all received outstanding new stereo remixes. It is a must for all Beatles fans.

I was actually cold to the animated feature film itself until I finally saw it on the big screen with the new 5.1 mix.  Now I'm a believer.


Best Track:          Hey Bulldog
Weakest Track:   March of the Meanies

12). Beatles For Sale
4 December 1964

In some ways this album marks an improvement over its predecessors. The first three tracks shows growing depth in their songwriting and a willingness to embrace the dark side of life and love. Lennon, in particular, began to write more personal songs like I'm A Loser. That said, the cliche about the exhaustion evident in the cover photo also manifesting itself in the tracks rings true. The album was recorded in bits and pieces between constant touring. The guys definitely needed a rest from manager Brian Epstein's goal to release two albums and four singles a year. (That would be a total of 36 songs. Name a major recording artist today that comes close to that level of productivity!) The worst songs on the album are the covers. They all seem perfunctory and lack the energy of the covers on their first two albums.


Best Track:    I Don't Want To Spoil The Party
Worst Track: Mr. Moonlight
11). Please, Please Me
22 March 1963

This album, in this configuration, wasn't officially released in the United States until the CDs came out. The bastardized first American version, Introducing The Beatles, released by VeeJay, was the first album I bought. Here's the funny part. While I was listening to this album, my older brother was listening to a cassette of The White Album that one of my uncles lent him. I didn't even realize both albums were from the same group.

Aside from the included singles and B-sides, this album was recorded in one day. It definitely captures the excitement of their early live performances. Who can argue with an album that starts with I Saw Her Standing There, one of their best original rockers, and ends with Lennon's larynx-shredding cover of Twist and Shout. That this album doesn't make their Top 10 only shows how the strength of their subsequent material.


Best Track:    Twist And Shout
Worst Track: A Taste of Honey

10). With The Beatles
22 November 1963

I have long debated whether this, the Beatles' second album, was better than their first one. This is one of the rare instances were the Beatles deliberately attempted to repeat themselves. Epstein and Martin were insistent that they duplicate the pattern of their first album. But there were differences. The covers from first album were mainly Brill Building songs. The Beatles switched to Motown for this album. Also, the first album had a more 'fifties sounding ambience. This album had a warmer sound. Ultimately, I give this album the edge because I think the originals are a tad stronger.


Best Track:    All My Loving
Worst Track: Hold Me Tight

9). Let It Be
8 May 1970

I was long familiar with the singles, but I didn't hear the rest of this soundtrack album until the early eighties when I was visiting a friend in Ocean City, Maryland. Loved it. Loved the concept. Loved the energy of the live, and semi-live material. And guest Billy Preston certainly added some soul. Objectively, you can easily argue that the songs themselves are not as strong as the songs on most of their other albums, but they have their own charms. If I love it, why do I rank this album so low. Mainly on account of The Long and Winding Road and Let It Be. Those songs are both fabulous, but they don't fit on this album. The strings on The Long and Winding Road, in particular, destroy the concept and takes me out of the groove every time. Paul was right to be upset.


In 2003, Paul supervised a remix of the album called Let It Be... Naked to remove producer Phil Spector's fingerprints. I was very happy with the remix of The Long and Winding Road, but I was utterly dismayed at the other unnecessary changes. They removed the studio chatter which gave the original album a warm, friendly vibe. They also used alternate takes and edits on certain songs, and even auto tuned John Lennon! Auto tuning John Lennon? Have you no shame?

Generally speaking, I have applauded the remixes of the Beatles albums, but not in this case!

Hopefully, the rumors are true that Apple is preparing to re-release the documentary film:


Best Track:    I've Got A Feeling
Worst Track: The Long and Winding Road

8). Revolver
5 August 1966

I know Beatle purists will probably be horrified that I placed this album so low on the list. Many people consider this to be the Beatles' best album. On an individual track-by-track basis, it might indeed be their best work. However, the album never really held together for me as a whole. I suppose my main problem is that I was decidedly underwhelmed by the American version, which trimmed three Lennon songs from this album to put on the Capitol hodgepodge Yesterday and Today. As a fan, I definitely fall into the Lennon camp, so, as much as I love Here There and Everywhere, Eleanor Rigby, and For No One, the album felt completely off balance without the Lennon songs. George actually sang more lead vocals on the American version than John did! (Love Harrison's song I Want To Tell You, another severely underrated Beatles track.) The CD release finally restored the Lennon songs Doctor Robert, And Your Bird Can Sing and I'm Only Sleeping, but I still didn't think the album held together. The tracks were too disparate.  I feel myself being pulled into too many different directions every time I listen.

Great songs, though.

Looking forward to a Giles Martin remix of this album! (The stereo remix of Eleanor Rigby on Yellow Submarine was great.)


Best Track:     Here There and Everywhere
Worst Track:  Love You To
7). Help!
13 August 1965

I never bought the American versions of Help! and A Hard Day's Night since they were half albums, mixing the soundtrack songs with lame instrumentals. Therefore, the British versions were the only ones I really knew.  Lennon's songwriting skills were growing by leaps and bounds on this album. He dominated side one -- the soundtrack side. That said, I enjoy McCartney's songs, The Night Before and Another Girl, even if some critics dismiss them as throwaways.

McCartney does dominate the non-soundtrack side with his tracks Yesterday -- the most covered song in the history of pop music -- and I've Just Seen A Face, one of my favorites.

BTW, although I will admit that A Hard Day's Night is objectively a better movie, I enjoy watching Help! more. I'll never forget seeing it for the first time on television. My aunt Sharon was babysitting us and she was so appalled by some edits in the film that she called the station to complain.


Best Track:    Help!
Worst Track: It's Only Love

6). Rubber Soul
3 December 1965

I hate to admit it, but I actually liked the American version of this album better.  The Capitol version, starting with I've Just Seen A Face instead of Drive My Car, gives the album a distinct folk rock vibe. It feels more focused than the British version. That said, there is certainly nothing wrong with the official version.

This is album where the Beatles grew-up. Their songs, particularly those by John Lennon, showed new maturity. (Paul would catch up to him on Revolver.) Now completely comfortable in the studio, they began to experiment. George even brought in the sitar for Norwegian Wood. Really, the only sour note on the album is the closer Run For Your Life. The jealous little rocker doesn't find the more enlightened mood of the rest of the album.


Best Track:    In My Life
Worst Track: Run For Your Life

5). A Hard Day's Night
10 July 1964

The Beatles' third album, and the soundtrack to their first movie, is the only one to feature only Lennon McCartney songs. The album opens memorably with the defiantly epic G7add9sus4 chord on the title track. It is one of the definitive moments in rock 'n' roll history. This Lennon dominated album (he sang lead on nine of the thirteen tracks) is also one of their most consistent sounding. Harrison played his new Rickenbacker 360 twelve string guitar throughout  the album. The full, warm sound inspired thousands of guitar players. It also doesn't hurt that the album is attached to a wonderful movie. The film captures Beatlemania at its height and the album shows why Beatlemania existed in the first place.


Best Track:    A Hard's Day Night
Worst Track: When I Get Home


4). Magical Mystery Tour
27 November 1967

Another soundtrack! (Five out of their thirteen canonical albums are soundtracks. And another one of their albums inspired a dreadful BeeGees musical, but the less said about that the better....)

Feeling they were little more than extras in Help!, they decided to make their own film. John Lennon once famously said "any picture goes with any music." Well, Magic Mystery Tour disproves that theory in a big way. The film proved to be their first "failure," but the music was a different story.

The first side of the album covers the McCartney dominated soundtracks songs. The second side collects a number of their psychedelic-era Summer of Love singles and B-singles.  Any album with Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane and I Am The Walrus has to rank pretty high!

BTW, this album is the only American configuration that entered the official Beatles canon after it was later released in Britain itself. (Initially, the Beatles only released a double EP of the soundtrack in their native country.)

PS. While looking for a video clip, I discovered the film has been released in Germany with a new 5.1 audio mix. How come I don't have that?


Best Track:   Strawberry Hills Forever
Worst Track: Flying

3). The Beatles (The White Album)
22 November 1968

The Beatles, aka The White Album, is a fiery return to more basic rock-n-roll after the group's psychedelic period, which began with Revolver and ended with Magical Mystery Tour.

To me, one of the problems of the Beatles' psychedelic period was the McCartney dominance. During that period, Lennon produced some absolutely amazing work, but his productivity (and leadership of the band) waned as a result of constant LSD use. Apparently one of the main reasons the group trekked off to India to study under the Maharishi was to try to ween Lennon off the drugs. It worked (at least temporarily.) No longer under the influence, Lennon's muse returned with a vengeance. He wrote a ton of songs, as did McCartney and Harrison. When they returned to England, they took the unprecedented step of demoing their material together at Harrison's Esher home prior to recording the album.

The result was a sprawling double album which dabbled in practically every kind of music. Although I docked Revolver a few points for its musical diversity, the conflicting styles and approaches are the whole point of this album. This is a band exploring their possibilities. That it holds together as a whole piece as well as it does is a tribute to the brilliant sequencing of the songs.

As good as the original album was, I really enjoy the recent remix. The songs now have more modern stereo mixes. I found it often maddening listening to this album in my old car.  I had a loose wire in my stereo system, and if I hit a pothole the wrong way, I would lose my left speakers, which meant, in the case of this album, entire instruments!  I wouldn't have that problem with these new mixes. I strongly recommend them! (Plus, you get the Esher demos as a bonus disc!)


Best Track: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Worst Track: Revolution 9

2). St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
26 May 1967

I'll never forget the first time I heard this album. I went over to a friend's house after a baseball game. He put this album on the stereo as he changed. We only stayed long enough to listen to the first three songs, but I was enraptured.  I didn't buy the album myself until many years later. When I did, I was decidedly underwhelmed. Aside from the tracks I was already familiar with from the 1967-1970 (The Blue Album) compilation, I didn't think much of the songs.

Prior to 2017, I would have ranked this album somewhere between five-and-seven on this list. Then came the Giles Martin remix. It was like listening to the album for the first time. I still think some of the songs are weak, but I really enjoy the aural experience of the album as a whole. I find myself listening to this album quite a bit. Hence it's surprising new position on my list.


Best Track:   A Day In The Life
Worst Track: Lovely Rita

1). Abbey Road
26 September 1969

The Beatles, angry and feuding, decided to put aside their petty grievances and produce one last album, under the watchful eye of producer George Martin. They all suspected this would be their last album, and they put their all in it and created their masterpiece.

In a compromise move, side one was given over traditional rock songs favored by Lennon while McCartney dominated side two with an elaborate song suite.  This album shows the group at the height of their musical skills, instrumentally and vocally. George Harrison finally comes to rival Lennon and McCartney as a songwriter with two of his best compositions Something and Here Comes The Sun, and even Ringo Starr contributes the delightful Octopus' Garden.

Some cynics have argued that the song suite is simply a hodgepodge of substandard songs and unfinished fragments, but it holds together beautifully and proves to be a great coda to their career.  Yes, they would all go onto solo success, but this album remains their collective pinnacle.


Best Track:   Something
Worst Track: Her Majesty

Other Albums:


If you purchased the albums listed above, you will still find yourself without some of their most important and popular tracks since the Beatles tended to create stand-alone singles not drawn from their albums, as well as other extraneous tracks. Therefore, you need Past Masters, Volume One and Past Masters, Volume Two, both 7 March 1988, to fill out the official canon. Both albums are necessary for true fans.


Of course, if you own all of those albums, you still don't have everything. There's still the live albums. The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl was never released during the height of Beatlemania, when it would have sold millions, because no one was satisfied with the audio quality. The band could barely be heard above the screaming fans. It finally came out on vinyl on 4 May 1977. I picked it up mainly as a curio, but only listened to it once or twice. That version was never released on CD. The material was remixed and released as Live At The Hollywood Bowl on 9 September 2016 in conjunction with the documentary Eight Days A Week. I enjoyed that album more, but I think it still falls in the completists only category. The substandard audio quality of Live! at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 (8 April 1977) makes these lively performances of the Beatles at their most raucous suitable only for the most rabid fans. Also, after years of court battles, Apple apparently has finally won control of the masters and has effectively buried them (for now.) Much kinder on the ears are the two albums Live on the BBC, 30 November 1994, and On Air - Live at the BBC Volume Two, 11 November 2013. The Beatles recorded dozens of their early songs and rock 'n' roll standards live in the studio for various BBC programs. These albums partially collect those songs.  These albums should entertain even the most casual fan. To me, the definitive Beatles live album has yet to be released.


Love, 20 November 2006, remixes and re-imagines a number of Beatles classics to be used in conjunction with a Cirque du Soleil show. It is a wonderful album for a new generation of fans, and its success paved the way for the great remixes of their canonical albums.


Less essential for the causal fans are Anthology 1 (21 November 1995), Anthology 2 (18 March 1996)  and Anthology 3 (28 October 1996). These three double albums treat fans to a number of previously unreleased songs and alternate takes, and, in the case of the first two albums, entirely new Beatles songs Free As A Bird and Real Love.  (Here's hoping Paul eventually releases the third track!) Of course, the fanatics already owned many of these recordings on bootlegs, but it was fantastic to hear them from higher quality source material.


1962-1966 (The Red Album), 1967-1970 (The Blue Album), both 2 April 1973. The Beatles were not a group that lent themselves to compilations. However, these two albums sets -- for a combined eight sides -- are a perfect distillation of the band mixing the singles with key album tracks. These were the gateway drug for the 2nd generation fans that came of age in the 1970s. They still remain the best purchases for the non-fanatics. 1, 13 November 2000. This compilation album of the band's number one hit singles was the best-selling album of the decade. Still, it is not a good compilation. Halfway through their career, the Beatles became less single-oriented and as a result this album fails to be truly representative of their later work. That said, 1+, the remixed version released in 2015, is essential for fans. I am not a fan of the Rock 'N' Roll, Love Songs and Beatles Ballads compilations. It feels unnatural for me to listen to their music in themed collections. I don't think any of those albums are currently available in CD format.

Yes, there are more albums and compilations, but I can't discuss them all. The ones listed above should give you the full of the Beatles' career. Of course, there is always one more thing for the completist....

Check out some videos I edited here:
FD Automatic: Red Shoes
Crack The Sky: Mr. President
Greg Kihn: Horror Show
Nils Lofgren: Alone

Other Lists:



My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.


Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

  

Listen to me read some chapters here:


Let's stay in touch:

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
Follow me on Facebook: Sean Paul Murphy
Follow me on Instagram: Sean Paul Murphy
Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy
Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)