Best Beatles album?
 

What's the best Beatles album, in your opinion?

My pick: Rubber Soul. It's just flawless from start to finish. It doesn't have any of my top 5 Beatles songs (not even top 7) but it's one that I listen to in its entirety the most often.

Top 5:
Rubber Soul
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Revolver
Abbey Road
The White Album

Re: Best Beatles album?
 

That's my top 5 right there. I'd probably take the White Album with me to a desert island, but that's because I grew up with it more than the others (and it's longer!). But the best album, IMO? Damn, that's tough. I guess I'd say Sgt Pepper's is the most complete to me, but my favorite--desert island choice notwithstanding--is probably Revolver.

actually, the only beatles album that i enjoy from start to finish is Revolver.

Man, that's tough... They're all great. Sgt. Peppers is the most polished, technical, recording of the bunch and has some unbelievable tunes... It's probably their "best" album. However, my personal favorite is The Beatles aka The White Album.

rubber soul, revolver would have been perfect if it wasn't for yellow submerine

I go back and forth between Rubber Soul and Revolver. After that it would be A Hard Day's Night.

Probably the White Album (though my version isn't white).

I'd have to go with Revolver.

Rubber Soul
Abbey Road
Beatles For Sale
The Beatles (white album)
Revolv.....ah what's the point. They are all better than most of the crap that's been released since.

REVOLVER

Easily Revolver/Rubber Soul. After that I'd go with Help/Hard Day's Night. I was listening to Sgt. Pepper over the weekend for the first time in eons. Flog me for saying this, but a few songs on there are zzzzzzzz. I'll take ReRubber any day over it.

:thumbsup:

I agree. The only songs I really like on the album are the two Sgt. Peppers, She's Leaving Home, Good Morning, and A Day in the Life.
It's a complete failure as a concecpt album. What's the concept? After the first two songs there's no connection within the album until they reprise Sgt Pepper. They wore fancy costumes on the cover ooo big concept.

It's so nice to see several other people who aren't 'gaga' over Sgt. Pepper. I understand why it was such a momentous album at the time, but honestly, I think every Beatles album prior to Sgt. Pepper is better.

Rubber Soul
A Hard Day's Night
Abbey Road
Revolver
The White Album

The concept is the Beatles are playing as another band. In other words, you aren't listening to the Beatles, but you are listening to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band perform at a concert. Hence the old style marching band uniforms and the introduction of "Billy Shears" at the begning of With A Little Help From My Friends. The cut outs are all the famous people that the Beatles admire who are attending the concert.

Inside the initial release there was a cut out of Sgt. Pepper, a pyschedelic colored inner sleeve, and it was the first rock album to have printed lyrics and one of the first to have a gatefold sleeve. On the inner sleeve are printed the words "A Splendid Time Is Guarunteed For All".

unfortunatly none of that is on the cd.

Off topic... But... The Beatles (mainly Paul) made Sgt. Peppers the way they did after hearing and seeing Zappa/The Mothers Of Invention's debut - Freak Out. Or so the story goes...

FWIW, that record was technically miles beyond anything produced prior to Sgt. Peppers... Pet sounds included. Frank Zappa was the man and was always way ahead of the curve when it came to recording techniques. R.I.P.

A hard Day's Night
Please Please Me
Help!
Beatles for Sale

when did he die?

About 5 or 6 years ago of prostate cancer I think.

Make that just about 10 years, come December.

Yeah I get that they're suppose to be another band but outside of the first two and the last two (and A Day in the Life is arguable) it really doesn't have a concept. Any of those songs could have been on Magical Mystery Tour or rejects we would have heard on the Anthology discs twenty years later...

Correct, and The Beatles themselves have said the same thing. They began work on it with a loose idea of a concept album but abandoned the idea when they realsied that it wasn't happening, and just released a bunch of songs, a few of which were linked.

It is only considered a concept album because some '60s journalists wanted to consider it such, and being the sheep they often are, they all just agreed wiht each other. It as certainly a different album, with lyrics, the cover shot, the postcards, the cut-outs etc, that all added to the myth.

Terry

That's pretty much it. The songs were written with really no central theme.

The first songs written for the album were With A Little Helf From My Friends, When I'm Sixty Four, and Strawberry Fields Forever. The last being the "B" side ( can you believe that was B side?) of the single Penny Lane.