The Best Beatles Album

[Pontiuth Pilate]

You tell me you've heard every sound there is, well: which one's the best?

A straightforward poll. Give your reasons though!

 

[Syterion]

Revolver is IMO the best. But Yellow Submarine gets Honorable Mention for catchiest song ever.

EDIT:Whoops, forgot reasons. My reason for picking Revolver is because it has the best songs.

 

[Tragdor]

Got to be the White Album is has the most varity, a song for everone of your possable moods

 

[cgannon64]

You posted this right as I'm in my height of Beatles fanhood. I've been listening to Rubber Soul, Revolver, The White Album, Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, and Let it Be nonstop.

Those are the albums I've heard the most of, and the most of to judge. I'll go through each:

Rubber Soul: Very good, probably the first one where the Beatles start to get serious. However, it still has hints of the early Beatles stuff, so in the end I find that its good but not as good as the others...

Revolver: Great album. It has so many great songs on it (Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, I'm Only Sleeping, Love You To, She Said She Said, Tomorrow Never Knows) and definetely one of my favorites which contains some of my favorite songs, but it has a few songs on it which I don't care too much more. No bad ones, but there are a few OK ones.

Sgt. Pepper: Sort of like Revovler, it has alot of great songs but a few that are just OK. Really it seems to have less OK songs than Revolver does (IMO), but I still hold it in the same regard as Revolver - very very good but not my favorite.

The White Album: Probably my favorite Beatles album. I don't see how anyone cannot choose this one, since it just has so many songs! Its a double album so its almost not fair. But there are so many great songs and then so many very good songs that its hard not to pick it. I can't think of a single bad song on it, even a single "OK" song. Every song is great...

Abbey Road: Another great album. Almost as good as the White Album, but it falls short because it has fewer songs (IMO). The medley at the end is great (I find myself singing Mean Mr. Mustard through You're Gonna Carry that Weight way too often) and the songs at the beginning are just as good...A great album all around.

Let it Be: Very good. Not as great as Abbey Road or Sgt. Pepper, IMO, but good nonetheless. Let it Be Naked is the one you should get, IMO, because the songs sound much better without the overdone theatrics - especially since their idea was to make a stripped down Beatles album.

So, in short, I think the White Album is the best, with Abbey Road and Revolver close, Sgt. Pepper very good, and Let it Be and Rubber Soul also good.

I still have to listen to Yellow Submarine, since its the only other "serious" Beatles album I haven't listened to since I began to notice (it probably got played when I was little but not since I've grown up and really started to like music).

 

[Marla_Singer]

I've hesitated between the White album and Abbey Road. I love both a lot. As I had to pick only one of both, I've picked Abbey Road because I'm sure most people will pick the White Album.. so it was just to defend an album most of people will consider as just a good outsider.

 

[delsully]

Could the Beatles be one of the most overrated bands of all-time and be one of the best bands of all-time also?

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by delsully
Could the Beatles be one of the most overrated bands of all-time and be one of the best bands of all-time also?

No, that is a paradox.

If they are one of the best of all time, then how could they be overrated since they were better than nearly everyone else?

 

[Leha]

Sgt.Pepper

 

[sysyphus]

Revolver, the peak of their cleverness.

Sgt. Pepper in my opinion ahd too much fluff.

 

[Plexus]

The White Album, though I was tempted to go with Abbey Road.

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

Despite the crappy songs like Wait and You Won't See Me, I happen to think that Rubber Soul is their best Norwegian Wood [the height of Lennon's acoustic guitar songs], Think For Yourself [after Something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Harrison's best Fab Four composition], The Word [flower power three years before it actually happened], In My Life, Nowhere Man, Looking Through You, and If I Needed Someone are all great songs.

Were the Beatles over-rated? Definitely, especially during Beatlemania. But George Harrison was completely UNDER-rated, upstaged by McCartney and Lennon. The moment he left the Beatles he became a star, but while he was working with the Fab Four, he only got ONE number one hit out of nearly 30 total for the Beatles. For You Blue, I Want To Tell You, Here Comes The Sun, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps should all have been hits!

 

[cgannon64]

Pssh, you just wanna be different.

Hey, minor threadjack, but did the Let it Be movie ever make it to DVD? Because I want to rent it on Netflix but I can't find it, wondering if they ever even made a DVD of it...

 

[Mescalhead]

I don't really like the Beatles, but I will say that Revolver beats out Rubber Soul by an inch. While Rubber Soul is very reflective and shows a great step up from their earlier career with simple rock and roll tunes, I will say Revolver is their masterpiece. They were more confident in their songwriting and it showed. They have some fairly rocking songs on this album with out the Beatles stepping out of their league trying to create a hard rocker Hendrix inspired song like the embarrising opener to Lonely Hearts Club band. (which sounds like a song you would hear on a childrens sing a long) Tax Man is a good example of Harrison showing that he is earning his money unlike Richard Starkey (why they ever got rid of Pete Best is still not fully understood by me). The rest of the album is solid, self assured and filled with classic Beatlesque vocal harmonies, with the minimalist, psychedelic closer, Tomorrow Never Knows. When I first heard this, I immediately dealt some respect to the men who put out the feculent Sgt. Pepper. I may not think they are the greatest band ever, or even in the top 100, but the cliched, corporately saturated Beatles as many see in the media, went on hiatus between 1965 and 66 and made two good albums with their prowess culminating in the latter, only to have the trap door completely fall out the following year.

 

[delsully]

Originally posted by eyrei


No, that is a paradox.

If they are one of the best of all time, then how could they be overrated since they were better than nearly everyone else?

Well, if you asked everyone who the best band was ever and the most overrated band ever, the beatles could win both, theoretically speaking.

 

[sysyphus]

Originally posted by Pontiuth Pilate
Were the Beatles over-rated? Definitely, especially during Beatlemania. But George Harrison was completely UNDER-rated, upstaged by McCartney and Lennon. The moment he left the Beatles he became a star, but while he was working with the Fab Four, he only got ONE number one hit out of nearly 30 total for the Beatles. For You Blue, I Want To Tell You, Here Comes The Sun, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps should all have been hits!

Agreed, George was every bit as much of a genius as Lennon and McCartney. It's probably due to the circumstances under which he joined the group as to why he was cast further back.

George's genius was more as an instrumentalist than a songwirtier though. Not to take anything away from his songwriting, I just think he was THAT good of a guitarist.

 

[sysyphus]

Originally posted by Mescalhead
(why they ever got rid of Pete Best is still not fully understood by me).

I'll clarify that one with an old joke:

Q: How do you Pete Best is at your door?

A: The knocking keeps getting faster.

Ringo was not pretty, his drumming lacked creativity and style, but he could keep a steady beat, which is the number one thing a drummer needs to be able to do.

In terms of the band's persona, Ringo was an importnat charchter playing the dim one who's always picked on (granted that has nothing at all to do with being a good band, but it was a key promotional thing.)

 

[Murr88]

Sgt. Pepper. The variations in styles: getting better, within you and without, you lucy in the sky, but i have found myself listening to let it be naked a lot lately. if you consider that to be the actual album, as the idea of producing a record with no added sound, the opposite of sgt. pepper really, was the orginal idea, then i guess i could say that let it be is my favvorite. But from rubber soul on out they're all great, really.

 

[Mescalhead]

Originally posted by sysyphus



Ringo was not pretty, his drumming lacked creativity and style, but he could keep a steady beat, which is the number one thing a drummer needs to be able to do.

I read that Pete Best was rather good, if not the best (ha ha, I'm so funny), but he was better looking than John and Paul (not saying much), this was a problem because a drummer should not represent the band. I think many Beatles fans like to think otherwise so as to make it look like they were more interested in the music, and I don't question their conviction, but they were too quick to listen to Brian Epstein. He wanted nothing more than a boy band, and to create hype. Most of those girls screaming at the airport in the U.S. in 1964 was a well orchestrated and financed facade. This isn't to say what happened later wasn't solid success, but it was very much grown by help of that incident.

Ringo was always very bad, in fact, he didn't drum on the original single for Love Me Do. Ringo later said that he did, but George Martin remembers different. Who are you going to believe, an incredibly talented producer or a some lame drummer who had little to offer creatively?

 

[cgannon64]

I find it funny that the only drum solo by Ringo that I know of (on 'The End') is like 4 seconds long and doesn't even deserve to be called a solo.

Still, who cares about Ringo? Good drummers help, yes, but bad ones don't necessarily hurt - look at the White Stripes.

 

[Mescalhead]

No. You NEED a good drummer. The only band that got away with mediocrity in the rythm dept. is The Stones. The White Stripes blow.

EDIT: Paul Cook was just a reincarnation of Charlie Watts, so put the Sex Pistols on the list.