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Pick your favourite Beatles album.

  • Please Please Me

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • With the Beatles

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • A Hard Day's Night

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • Beatles for Sale

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • Help!

    Votes: 2 2.4%
  • Rubber Soul

    Votes: 10 12%
  • Revolver

    Votes: 15 18%
  • Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

    Votes: 13 16%
  • Magical Mystery Tour

    Votes: 6 7.3%
  • White Album

    Votes: 17 21%
  • Yellow Submarine

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • Abbey Road

    Votes: 11 13%
  • Let It Be

    Votes: 2 2.4%
  • Past Masters Vol. 1

    Votes: 0 0%
  • Past Masters Vol. 2

    Votes: 1 1.2%

Favourite Beatles Album

13K views 84 replies 52 participants last post by  Phil Classical Purist  
#1 ·
Pick your favourite Beatles album, and tell us why. :D
 
#6 ·
The White Album followed closely by Revolver, but I'm a big fan of most of their output from Help! onwards. The diversity from the sophisticated art-pop of Paperback Writer/Revolver to the stripped-back rock 'n' roll of Lady Madonna and Revolution 2 via the lush kaleidoscopic soundworld of Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour is pretty amazing - and all achieved within the space of little over 2 years.

The Stones also did well in this regard (i.e. Paint It Black/Between The Buttons to Jumpin' Jack Flash/Beggars Banquet via We Love You) but their 67 output wasn't as good because the Stones just weren't really suited to psychedelia - it seemed as if they were trying to play a stylistic keep-up game with their old rivals in what was already a pretty bad year for them what with the drugs busts and Brian Jones beginning to fade into the wallpaper (on the other hand, the Beatles lost Epstein and Lennon had marital issues but they still remained focussed - at least for now). The Satanic Majesties Request album appeared months too late anyway as the Beatles had already stolen their thunder with Pepper and were already considering psychedelia a dead-end once the Magical Mystery Tour material was done and dusted.

However, who'd have thought by early 68 that the Stones would come back so strongly and enter their finest era yet whereas the Beatles were about to be dragged down by dramas largely of their own making which resulted in them losing their collective will to live less than a year later?
 
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#7 ·
I can pick out favourite tracks, but the albums are too closely associated with the rise and fall of my childhood that I can't offer a single album just on the basis of the music.

Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields/Hello Goodbye/Lady Madonna - four greats that only appeared on compilations.
 
#9 ·
I see I'm the only one who voted for 'Beatles for Sale'. I bought it when I was fourteen & had a massive crush on the Beatles, especially Paul McCartney. I like the early stuff - very hum-along-able - and went off them when they became druggy & surreal. On this album you have songs like 'Eight Days a Week', 'What you're doing' and 'I'm a loser'. The last two appealed particularly to my adolescent angst, wearing bottle green polo-neck sweaters & spending all afternoon in our lounge playing Beatles tracks over and over and mooching round the room. Happy Days! :)
 
G
#13 ·
You enforce my point about the context for listening being important to your perception of it. I didn't hear Beatles for Sale (or With The Beatles) until my older brother bought them in about 1971/2, by which time, traumatised by their break-up, these songs carried a nostalgia for a long-gone past.
 
#14 ·
The White Album: for the variety and for the way despite having many tracks that sound like odd filler on their own the album in its entirety is greater than the sum of its parts and a miracle of track sequencing. And for the slightly dark, uneasy, antagonistic tone atypical of The Beatles that seems to be just under the surface.

Also I want to give a shout-out to the now unjustly neglected 1970 uncollected round-up Hey Jude album, which I think of as being every bit as canonical as the others.

Image
 
#15 ·
The Hey Jude and Let it be albums could have been grouped together with the White Album as they were from the same period.
 
#20 ·
It is very hard for me to choose between the White Album, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Abbey Road and Stg. Pepper's. I love all these records almost equally. But I voted for the White Album. Even the "fillers" are quite amazing in my opinion, and it have two tracks that are on my Beatles "top 3" ('While My Guitars Gently Weeps' and 'Sexy Sadie', the other one being 'A Day in the Life').
 
#21 ·
I voted for Rubber Soul, partly because of so many superb songs on it but also, admittedly, because of memories associated with it (tough to dissociate those from 'critical thinking') but perhaps first and foremost: it marks such a sophisticated advance for the boys - one that showed them their future path.

Abbey Road is a close second - the lyrics are so creative, so confident, exquisite really. Mean Mr. Mustard is still out there somewhere waiting, I know. Not to mention Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Paul said they came to use the term for anything bad that unexpectedly happens). They really were at the height of their powers. Several years ago, I heard an interesting story on NPR about how grammar school teachers use the songs in their classes. Children like them for their 'jauntiness' and playfulness and the fact that the Beatles "sing high" like they do. What a wonderful legacy.
 
#22 ·
Past Masters 2 is also vital for me in getting the complete(ish) picture of my favourite Beatles period as there were various non-album singles and b-sides but I have to say I'd much prefer to see them as bonus tracks on the contemporaneous albums rather than being lumped together as a compilation.
 
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#28 ·
I voted Rubber Soul because my older sister had it when I very very little and it has a lot of nostalgia for that time, but also because it is a transition from the innocent yeah, yeah, yeah times of the early 60s to the more surreal (sorry Ingélou) stuff that was the forerunner to the beloved progressive rock I later enjoyed. Also a large step in the transition from AM radio hit singles to album oriented rock, wherein the entire album began to be considered a work unto itself.
 
#30 ·
Revolver, with Rubber Soul breathing down its neck. Sgt. Pepper's is third.

I like all of the late albums, but they became a little messy, not as tight. The songs themselves sometimes weren't as good as they leaned on production more. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Macca and Lennon weren't balancing other out as well.

The Beatles were "cooler" then, but so were a lot of bands.