I’ve been listening to entire albums on weekends, usually in the morning. The Beatles seem like a good band to listen on a Saturday or Sunday morning (at least that’s how I feel right now). But instead of writing reactions in the “Saturday/Sunday” morning thread, I thought I’d create a separate thread for Beatles albums specifically. My plan is to listen to the albums in chronological order.
Please Please Me (1963)
Notes
12/24/2021
I listened to Let It Be right before this. Both are on par in my view–among my least favorite Beatles albums
Original songs I liked the best on this: I Saw Her Standing There; Ask Me Why; Love Me Do; Do You Want to Know a Secret.
I considered doing this once but couldn’t figure out a good approach. Early in their career, their UK releases and US releases were different, so chronological order was confusing to me. Follow the US chronology and you miss songs, or maybe it was the other way around, or maybe it’s both.
Anyway, there’s pop rock and pop country and pop r&b so people who don’t think the Beatles are a rock band are putting a weird definition on what rock music is.
If you allow for a distinction between pop rock and rock, then it makes sense that some would say they’re not a rock band. Between these two categories, I would categorize the Beatles in the former. At the very least, I think this is a legitimate argument.
As for chronology, I’m just going by the dates listed at apple music.
With the Beatles (1963)
The songs aren’t bad, but my guess is that this might be one of the weakest of their albums. For whatever reason, I don’t care for the covers (although I really like “Till There Was You,” a song by Meredith Wilson, but I suspect that’s partly because this is the first time I’ve heard it. It’s a good song.) The original songs aren’t bad, but they’re not really strong in my view. The singing and performances are just OK, too.
12/24/2021
Notes
Maybe I would place this below Please Please Me because the originals on the latter are better in my view. “All I’ve Got to Do” was surprisingly interesting, though.
That’s not the first time you’ve heard it. It’s the love song in The Music Man. Marion the Librarian sings it to Harold Hill.
And although this remake was flawed, I still liked it, and I love Kristin Chenoweth.
When I wrote that I never heard of that song, I wondered if that were the case. I figured there was a good chance that if I did hear of it, you would let me know. And voila!
I think I like the Beatles version better than the two you posted.
On a related note, I think there are several Beatles songs where they have this kind of show tunes quality, and I tend to like these songs, particularly putting them in a pop-rock format. “Martha My Dear” would be another example. Off the top of my head, I don’t know if that’s an original, but that’s one of my favorites off the White album.
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
I’m not sure if I’m not just in the mood for this music, but this album feels a little flat for me. I had higher expectations for this, too–based on the soundtrack from the movie of the same name.
12/25/2021
Notes
Side 1
Side 2
Not sure why the album felt flat to me on the earlier listening, but I responded to it more favorably this time around. The Beatles seemed to have found their stride here–specifically with their writing. No covers, and all the songs are at least solid. There is not a dud in the bunch in my opinion. Really, the challenge is picking out which song is the worst of the merely solid songs. In terms of choosing an album that represented rock n’ roll of the mid-sixties (or wanting to listen to this type of music), this would be a great pick.
I felt like Lennon dominated this album–in terms of his singing. This is the album that could create the impression that Lennon is the better singer than McCartney. McCartney only sang lead on three songs, but even on these, he sounds like the lesser singer. (Well, he has that beautiful sound on “And I Love Her,” I guess.)
Another observation: The songs are short, often under 3:00 minutes, sometimes closer to 2:00 minutes. But I don’t really notice this, nor think this is a bad thing. Indeed, I wonder if contemporary pop musicians would benefit by writing shorter songs. The situation might be like writing a paper. The goal should be concise. A song can be ruined if a composer is adding fluff. Pruning a song might make it better. If it’s under 3 minutes, who cares if the song is good?
This is odd, but I would probably put this ahead of Beatles for Sale and Help!, and I feel like this is on par with Rubber Soul, and Revolver.
Beatles for Sale (1964)
With low expectations and maybe the right mood, I found myself enjoying this. Recently, I’ve been listening to their later albums. Hearing them play rock n’ roll, including the covers, was refreshing. They’re good at playing rock n’ roll, although I think there’s an interesting contrast with the Stones. Specifically, the Stones seem grimier, not as clean-cut.
I think I liked some of the tunes because they were unfamiliar (e.g., “No Reply,” “What You’re Doing”). A song like “What You’re Doing” may be a weaker one in their catalogue, but that speaks to how good they are, I think. It’s the type of song that might be a big hit for another group.
I really like “I’ll Follow the Sun.” I think it’s among my favorite songs of theirs.
Edit
I listened to most of this again, after listening to Help!. My sense is that these two albums are similar in quality.
12/27/2021
Notes on the songs
General notes
Help! (1965)
I don’t really have much to say except that, for some reason, I liked this less than Beatles for Sale, for some reason. I was distracted by other things, and I think that’s a big factor. The album may not be great, and it’s not something I’d listen to a lot, but it’s fine overall.
Other comments:
12/27/2021
Song notes
Side 1
Side 2
General comments
Album Rankings so far
From best to worst:
A Hard Day’s Night
Beatles for Sale
Please Please Me; Let it Be; Help! With the Bealtles
Rubber Soul (1966)
Notes
Revolver (1966)
Notes
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Notes
The Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Notes
(This is the British EP order.)
I believe the following songs were released as singles, but appear on the American LP of this album:
“Hello, Goodbye”
“Strawberry Fields Forever”–(This sounds like a different version from the one I heard on the radio)
“Penny Lane”
“Baby You’re a Rich Man”
Of the four, I’m familiar with the first three. All of them are solid.
(The White Album) (1967)
The Beatles stretching out, exploring and expanding.
Notes on side 1 and 2
Do do do do do do do do, oh yeah-guitar picking to a quiet, maybe a little plaintive melody
Like a lizard on a window pane is introduced by pounding drums and introduction of electric guitar accompaniment–although the tempo and guitar picking accompaniment continues at the same tempo
Side 2
Notes on side 3 and 4
Side 4
The Yellow Submarine (1969)
Notes
This might be the worst album of the bunch. (I’m not including the instrumental movie score.)
Abbey Road (1969)
Introduction
In my experience, the greatest works of art are the most difficult to write about–not because of the complexity or profundity of the work (although that could definitely reasons)–but one’s enthusiasm and adoration for the work can, ironically, get in the way. If the artwork is that great, what one says must be commensurate with that greatness–at least in terms of the effort and thoughtfulness behind the words. This creates a kind of (understandable) pressure on the writer–a pressure which prevents the writer from writing anything.
That’s how I feel about this album.
Now, while the album deserves my best efforts of analysis and expression, in order to overcome paralysis, I’m going to get my thoughts out there, without worrying about the adequacy of my expressing them. So, if the writing is poor, there’s at least a partial explanation.
(Note: While I’ve heard some of the songs many times in the past, last week was the first time I listened to the entire album, from start to finish; and I’ve since been listening to it repeatedly.)
Two Key Concepts
Juxtaposition (e.g., dark-light, etc.) and development are two key concepts of the album in my view–the juxtaposition of ideas or moods and the development of musical ideas. With regard to the latter, I’m thinking some ideas about melody that I recently heard from Pat Metheny (in a Rick Beato interview). He mentioned the musical development in “Happy Birthday” serves as a kind of simple, but valuable model. From the second track of side 2 is a tour de force of this concept.
A note about songs that may have ruined this album
I’m thinking specifically of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Octopus’s Garden,” and “Her Majesty.” Upon my first listening of this album, these songs left me scratching my head. I know they had songs like this in preceding albums, but I felt a sense of exasperation–partly because it seemed to mar the good music around them. (“Maxwell’s” macbre subject was a bit disturbing as well.) Indeed, I thought if you removed the songs, not only would nothing of value would be lost, but the album would sound better. Here’s what the sequence would look like:
“Come Together”
“Something”
(Maxwell)
“Oh Darling”
(Octopus)
“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”
From “Something” to “I Want You”–you’d have a variety of romantic modes–and musically there would be a consistency there as well.
As for “Her Majesty,” it’s really just a throwaway song tacked on at the end. Indeed, according to the wikipedia entry, McCartney originally sang the song in between “Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam,” but didn’t like the sequence after listening to it, and told the engineer to cut it out. But the engineer moved it to the end of the tape, twenty seconds after “The End,” because he remembered George Martin saying never to throw out anything. The engineer put a note to not record the last song for the final version, but the the person transferring the recording left it on. When the Beatles heard this, they liked it, and left it in.
I actually listened to the album this way, and it sounded pretty good–although as time has passed, the sense that this diminished the album has grown stronger.
Are these songs really good? Or do they at least make the album better? To the first question, I must say that “Maxwell” grows on me and I like the more I hear it. I think of the music in a similar vein as “When I’m Sixty-Four,” a song I like. As to the contents, I believe McCartney used “tongue-in-cheek” to describe the song. Based on this remark, the song could be seen as black humor. Seen in that way, the song does become more appealing to me.
For what it’s worth, I originally preferred “Octopus,” which is a song that I don’t love (although I like it more than “Yellow Submarine”), but justifying its inclusion, based on the nature of the song, seem more defensible.
As for “Her Majesty,” I like the song–which reminds me of “Blackbird.” The thing is, at a little under a minute, it’s more of a fragment than a real song. (I would have liked to heard a fuller, more developed version of this.)
Whether the songs are good, independently, perhaps the more important question is, do they fit in with the other songs, and enhance the album overall? I don’t have a firm position on this, but if I had to defend their inclusion, I would argue the lighter touch the songs provide could help prevent the album from becoming too earnest. Perhaps a more compelling argument would be the way the songs provide interesting juxtaposition with the other songs–moving from seriousness to humor and whimsy. As I mentioned, the album seems filled with the juxtaposition of opposites, both thematically and musically (which I’ll go into more below), and the inclusion of these songs would be consistent with this.
Notes on the songs:
Side 1
Side 2
Beautiful piano intro to one of the more beautiful melodies by the group in my opinion. This follows the pattern of “Happiness is a Warm Gun”–but I like it a lot better. It’s worth breaking down:
Section 2 “Out of college, money spent…” (1:10). The music picks up both in tempo and tone–with walking bass driving the music, but the lyrics paint a bleak picture. Then there’s what sounds like another development of the melody at “But oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go…”1:30 This melodic line doesn’t last long, and goes into the (mostly instrumental transition).
Transition: This starts with background singers’ harmonies at 1:47, with electric guitar line under it. As the background singer harmonies start to fade, the guitar line emerges at (2:09) and seven seconds later moves into what sounds like a transitional line (2:17), which repeats several times before moving into the next section (“One sweet dream…”)
Section 3 “One sweet dream…(2:26). The music is more energetic and optimistic. Lyrics seem to now match the music. I like the music on the “came true today” part as well, with the repeated guitar(?) figure (2:47). Then an appealing distorted guitar sustained note and short bass figure comes in (3:03), going into the group singing, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.”) And this leads leads to an outro…
Outro:…with chimes (3:28 and eventually croaking frogs, crickets (another allusion to Pet Sounds?)
A lot of good, interesting music happens in 4:02 minutes. This is one of my favorite Beatles musical moments.
Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came Into the Bathroom Window
To me, you can’t or shouldn’t separate these three songs–and one could possibly argue that “Sun King goes along with this, but to me it feels more like an interlude connecting “You Never Give Me Your Money” and “Mustard/Pam/Window” One thing to notice: the energy and tempo, to a lesser degree gradually builds. Each song is short “Mustard” (1:07), “Pam” (1:13), and “Window” (1:59) and they really function more like movements or sections–similar to the way “You Never Give Me Any Money” featured a three sections.
Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
I linked “Mustard/Pam/Window,” and I’m linking “Golden/Weight/End” together, but separate from the first grouping. In reality, all six are tightly interwoven, whereas “You Never Give Me Any Money” is bookended by airy, musical reveries–although I think of those three “songs” as part of the six.
But speaking about “Mustard/Pam/Window” and then “Golden/Weight/End” seems to work better. For one thing, “Golden/Weight/End” section takes the music to another level–to its climax and then brings closes out the entire suite.
.
“You Never Give Me Any Money,” “Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came Into the Bathroom Window,” and “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End”–I love these three sections. If you take them all together–I think it’s the greatest 17 minutes in rock/pop–and among the best in any genre.
Let It Be (1970)
Notes
a decent song.
This was a disappointing album. Maybe one of the worst I’ve heard, especially relative to the three or four albums that preceded it.