2003CC: The Beatles
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67): *****
- Abbey Road (69): *****
- A Hard Day's Night (64): *****
- Revolver (66): *****
- The Beatles [White Album] (68): *****
- Rubber Soul (65): *****
- 1962 - 1966 (73): *****
- 1967 - 1970 (73): *****
- Past Masters, Vol. 2 (88): **** 1/2
- Please Please Me (63): **** 1/2
- Help! (65): **** 1/2
- With the Beatles (63): ****
- Magical Mystery Tour (67): ****
- The Beatles One (00): *** 1/2
- Past Masters, Vol. 1 (88): *** 1/2
- Live at the BBC (94): *** 1/2
- Beatles for Sale (64): ***
- Anthology 3 (96): ***
- Let It Be (70): ***
- Anthology 2 (96): ** 1/2
- Yellow Submarine [Songtrack] (99): ** 1/2
- Anthology 1 (95): **
- Yellow Submarine (69): * 1/2
- In the Beginning: The Early Tapes (70): 1/2
This is an entry in an up-dated series I'm going to call 2003CC. Several people have requested updates of the older series, and since critical opinions shift, I am revamping the entire system. I am averaging the opinions of several excellent music critics to produce a list of each artist's albums. Rather than using a number system, which was perhaps a bit clunky, I will now be using a five-star system. The albums will be listed in a recommended purchasing order, so new fans will have an idea of where the best place to start buying an artist's work is.
These are not my opinions, although, since I have chosen the critics used (and I'm using many), my taste will perhaps seep through a bit.
Terribly nerdy, I know, but maybe this will help people only now beginning to dabble into certain artists' bodies of work.
Scale:
***** - Masterpiece
**** 1/2 - Classic
**** - Great
*** 1/2 - Good
*** - Above Average
** 1/2 - Average
** - Below Average
* 1/2 - Bad
* - Terrible
1/2 - One of the worst albums ever
lbangs, maybe you can explain this to me. I don't have the album Let It Be, but I'm wondering just why it's received a lot of flak from critics. Here it's among the Beatles' worst non-compilation albums (although it still is at an "above average" position) but why is it lower than their other albums? I've heard a few of the songs on it, and aren't "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" supposed to be very popular, widely praised Beatles hits? And it also contains the pretty popular "Get Back", "Two of Us", and "Across the Universe", all of which are good songs.
Compare Let It Be to Please Please Me and With the Beatles, both of which contain some good songs (I Saw Her Standing There, Love Me Do, and Twist and Shout on Please Please Me; All My Loving and Please Mister Postman on With the Beatles), but neither of which contain songs as big as the ones I mentioned on Let It Be.
Is my perception skewed? It may be, since I actually don't have any of these three albums, I'm just going off of what I've heard. Do critics not like the songs on Let It Be as much as I thought? Are the songs on Please Please Me and With the Beatles widely considered better even though they are less popular? Or are the other 7 tracks on Let It Be just really atrocious? Please please enlighten me.
Well, with Let It Be, you pretty much get the tunes you mentioned and a lot of filler. Of the tunes you mentioned, Long and Winding Road was nearly lost inside of Phil Spector's strings, Two of Us is nice but slight, and a superior version of Across the Universe appears on Past Masters, Vol. 2. The poor production and the filler already make it The Beatles' weakest album. The fact that every song you mentioned besides Two of Us is on the blue album (1967-1970) makes it pretty useless.
That's just my opinion. Perhaps J Black should chime in here with a dissenting view, since I believe it is his favorite album by the Fab.
Does that help?
I've nearly finished the Elvis list!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs