With the “Get Back” Documentary released on Disney+ a few weeks back, I took a look over the 13 official Beatles studio albums to rank them in order of preference (for me). The albums listed below are UK, studio albums only, in release date order.
- Please Please Me – 22/3/63
- Beatles For Sale – 22/11/63
- A Hard Days Night – 10/7/64
- With The Beatles – 4/12/64
- Help! – 6/8/65
- Rubber Soul – 3/12/65
- Revolver – 5/8/66
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – 26/5/67
- Magical Mystery Tour – 27/11/67
- The Beatles (White Album) – 22/11/68
- Yellow Submarine – 13/1/69
- Abbey Road – 26/9/69
- Let It Be – 8/5/70
And this is the order I put them in, in order of preference:-
1. Abbey Road
McCartney has no shoes on. Hmm, must be dead then…
Is this not one of the greatest albums of all time? I find it difficult to fault it on any level. From the iconic cover, to the conspiracy theories1, to the 17 tracks.
There are 11 tracks on Side 2, most of which form a medley, the last being called The End which in a turn of poetic irony, was the last track The Beatles recorded together. On top of that it includes two of George Harrison’s best compositions in Here Comes The Sun and Something. Lennon had left the group by the time the album was released although much like McCartney’s apparent death, nobody but the band knew.
2. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The band Salt ‘n’ Pepa would not form for another 18 years, so we listened to this instead.
Is this not one of the greatest albums of all time (what, another one?) Again, an iconic cover and an album flooded with songs from every genre and every spectrum; even dare I say it, Harrison’s Within You, Without You, which for me shouldn’t be on a pop record. It belongs somewhere else, Sitar or no Sitar.
The title, said McCartney, came from a misheard conversation on a plane when he thought their roadie Mal Evans, had asked for Sergeant Pepper and not ‘salt and pepper’, and as a result, the concept album was born. From then, the seed of an idea surrounding a fictional band started to take shape.
3. Revolver
The Beatles were first to use realistic moving eyes, long before Action Man ‘invented’ Eagle Eyes
Is this not one…ok yes, I’ve done that already. Anyway, it really is another top album. To be honest, it could take the top spot in this list purely because it includes the greatest Beatles track of all time, Tomorrow Never Knows. This is where The Beatles decided to invent Psychedelia and Sampling all at the same time.
Loads of tape looped sounds open the track2 and then Lennon’s voice, ‘like a thousand chanting monks on top of a mountain’, utters the immortal phrase:-
"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream"
If this is not The Beatles at the height of their mystical powers, I don’t know what is (apart from the other two albums I’ve already mentioned).
It also includes Yellow Submarine, Taxman, and Eleanor Rigby, the latter including no musical input from The Beatles.
4. The Beatles (aka The White Album)
Shiny white cover and not much else…until you play the album
This sprawling mass of music came out of a trip to India to meet the Maharishi Yogi, who it transpired wasn’t as holy and godlike as he had first appeared3. However, it gave The Beatles the chance to write vividly albeit independently of each other. The ‘concept’ here was to release an album with absolutely no information on the sleeve. The only clue is the embossed The Beatles on the front cover.
A double album, it’s highlights include, Back In The U.S.S.R, Dear Prudence, Glass Onion and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and that’s just the first four tracks. Elsewhere it features Sexy Sadie, Lennon’s take on the Maharishi, Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and the nonsense that is Revolution 9.
5. Rubber Soul
The Beatles were clearly long-haired layabouts.
Another wonder of an album where it’s difficult finding a duff track. Here you’ll find all sorts once more, from Drive My Car, the album opener, to Norwegian Wood (where Lennon discusses an amorous affair).4
Other wonders on here are Nowhere Man, The Word, Girl and Michelle.
6. A Hard Days Night
As a 4-year-old, I was fascinated by this album cover
The only Beatles album to contain Lennon/McCartney songs only, the album was written as the soundtrack to the bands first feature film. My Dad had the album, so I played it a lot when I was young (I still have it). The film had been shot and most of the soundtrack had been written but they had no title or corresponding song until Ringo, on discussing the long hours they were working and not being sure what time it was said, “It’s been a hard day… er…night!” and suddenly the film had a title.
Lennon went home later, wrote the song in the evening, came into the studio the next day and within three hours the song was finished. George Martin decided to add “the most famous chord in popular music history” onto the beginning of the song as the striking sound would open the film and the album. It’s not a particularly easy chord to reproduce as it requires three guitars, a bass, a piano and drums…to do it properly. Other excellent songs include Tell Me Why, Can’t Buy Me Love, Any Time At All and You Can’t Do That.
7. Magical Mystery Tour
They are the Egg Men
McCartney came up with the idea to make a film without a story or script (never a good idea) then add music to it. The resulting film suggested The Beatles should have stuck to song-writing but Paul would revisit this open-ended, flexible approach for the Let It Be album (and we all know how that turned out).
However, if the film was a messy confusion of ideas, the accompanying musical release was even worse. A six-track double EP was released in the UK with an 11 track album in the USA. The album consisted of singles releases from 1967. The LP wasn’t released in its entirety in the UK until 1976 and includes the following standout tracks:- Magical Mystery Tour, The Fool On The Hill, I Am The Walrus, Hello Goodbye, Penny Lane, and All You Need Is Love.
8. Help!
Sadly The Beatles are not spelling out the word “Help” in semaphore
Another soundtrack album but The Beatles weren’t in control of the film on this one thankfully. Until now they had always added a few songs in from their Hamburg Club days and this album is no exception But the song Help! does include the first reference to depression, fear and anxiety in popular music culture.
Lennon thought the fame, fortune, money, and honours that came with being a pop star were out of proportion with how he viewed himself as a person. The album also includes Yesterday, a big departure from full on pop music for The Beatles at the time. Yesterday has become the most covered song in history with around 500 recorded covers. The album also includes Ticket To Ride and You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.
9. Let It Be
Apart from George temporarily leaving the band, they appeared to enjoy making this album
Not a favourite with Beatles aficionados, mainly it seems because Lennon gave the recordings to Phil “wall of sound” Spector to Produce. Having said all that, Spector wasn’t given much direction in what the band wanted, since the band couldn’t decide.
The acrimony between them meant none of them would agree with the other, on principle. However, it does include McCartney’s Let It Be, which is ironic as he spent most of the recording sessions not ‘letting it be’ at all.5 In the ‘Get Back’ documentary, he can be seen stressing over every tiny detail of songs, arrangements and practice, and stressing out the rest of the band in the process.
The album also includes highlights such as Across The Universe, The Long & Winding Road and Get Back.
10. Please Please Me
The debut album, replete with image taken at EMI House
The debut Beatles album opens with McCartney counting the band in, “1,2,3,4…” and they fly into “I Saw Her Standing There”. The album also includes the first two singles Love Me Do and Please Please Me. Both include the signature early Beatles harmonica sound by John Lennon. The second track, Misery was written by Lennon and McCartney for Helen Shapiro, with whom they were touring. She turned it down. They went on to global stardom and Helen, well…
Not often mentioned regarding this album is the Lennon track “There’s A Place” which includes the lyrics “There’s a place I can go, when I feel low, and it’s my mind.” These days it’s a reference to psychological issues but in 1963 it was considered to be a song that meant nothing more than ‘thinking about stuff’. How times have changed. The album closes with Twist and Shout which was recorded as the final song of the session in one take, as Lennon lost his voice after recording it.
11. Beatles For Sale
Mean, Moody, Magnificent!
The fourth release in the Beatles catalogue comes in at No. 11. It included the standard ‘standards’ but little gems such as I’ll Follow The Sun‘ which McCartney had written as a 16 year old, after a bout of the flu. The album also boasts Eight Days A Week and Every Little Thing; pointers to the more sophisticated direction they were taking.
12. With The Beatles
Black & White but visually stunning
The follow up album to the Please Please Me debut, With The Beatles included 6 covers and the first recorded George Harrison composition (Don’t Bother Me). Two covers, Please, Mr Postman and Money became big hits when recorded much later by The Carpenters and The Flying Lizards respectively.
The album also included All My Loving, which was not a single but was released on an EP instead.
13. Yellow Submarine
Much like the film, the album can be hard work
Yellow submarine is an oddity all on its own. Not an album as such, nor a film soundtrack, it’s sort of a bit of both but not really very much of either. It’s not even a Beatles album either, since half of it is a film score written by George Martin. It featured the title track (albeit the song had already been released on the Revolver album), All You Need Is Love, Hey Bulldog (complete with barking Beatles) and the wonderful psychedelic It’s All Too Much, written by George Harrison (under the influence of LSD). It’s a song which returns to the musical theme of Tomorrow Never Knows; wide, expansive with droning chords and mystical chanting.
So, there you go. The 13, ranked. I did look at another site which had also ranked the albums. They had Revolver at No.1 and Yellow Submarine at No. 13. So not totally different. It’s not the easiest thing to do because I like them all in some way or another. And if you haven’t heard all the albums that much, then what are you waiting for?
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- There was a theory that Paul McCartney had died sometime around late 66 early 67 and had been replaced by a looky-likey (yes, I know) and it was confirmed because the McCartney on the album cover didn’t have any shoes on.
- The “seagull” sound is McCartney laughing, speeded up.
- The story is he became a little too interested in the actress Mia Farrow, but not apparently for religious reasons
- You may also remember that in the mid 60’s (assuming you’re old like me) that ‘wooden’ wallpaper was all the rage, to make a room look as if had been panelled with timber. Peter Asher (of Peter & Gordon fame), brother of actress Jane Asher (McCartney’s girlfriend) had gone one better and had a large mural of a wood in his room. Allegedly John was there admiring it and someone mentioned it was a mural of a wood in Norway, and the song title was (allegedly) born.
- The song is about a dream McCartney had where his dead mother (Mother Mary) appeared and reminded him to take things easy and just ‘let it be’