Over the coming days, I will be using the power of youtube to listen to the entire Beatles back catalogue. Why? Because The Beatles didn't make this shit for us to not listen to as much as humanly possible, did they?

Please Please Me part 1:



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Please Please Me is a good album. I always enjoy it very much, but if you were going to pick one Beatles album to listen to, this wouldn't be it. It peaks in the middle with Love Me Do and sort of trails off at the end, for my money. The inclusion of so many covers (most obviously Twist and Shout at the end) is always a bit of a surprise if you haven't listened to it in a while. This album, like most of the early Beatles stuff, always makes me wish I'd been born forty years earlier so that I could listen to it when it was first released and without thinking "hey, this isn't as good as Hard Day's Night..."

This is truth.

I've been listening to only Paul Westerberg all week long.

With The Beatles part 1:



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Again, there's a lot of covers on this album. Most of them Motown hits, which is not in itself a problem, but the original songs really stand out. I don't know this album as well as some others, and while I did enjoy it, it doesn't stand up to what came later so I'm sort of getting through it as quickly as possible to get to the next one. It's probably a disservice, because With The Beatles has some great songs on it, but retrospectively, you can't help but realise that things can only get better.

Thommy, stop pushing your devil music

A Hard Day's Night part 1:



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Here we go then. For me, Hard Day's Night is your definitive early Beatles album, which is the period from which I know them best. This is essentially an album I grew up listening to (my mother and stepfather are huge Beatles fans - their home is just full of pictures and memorabilia) so I'm massively biased, but it's just a great fucking album. The first half especially is just nothing but ridiculously catchy pop songs. Of course, this is The Beatles' first film soundtrack and it really is worth checking out the movie sometime if you don't know it. It's mental.

Beatles For Sale part 1:



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With this album, we're back to a lot of covers again. Why such reliance on covers, you ask? Well, The Beatles are really the watershed between singers and bands as just performers and singers and bands as writers. The Beatles were the first band to write most of their own material but, in the mid 60s, it wasn't unusual for an artist to have much of their output be old standards or, at least, something that had been written for them by someone else. Of course, this still continues today (in fact, it's probably as common as it ever was with mainstream artists) but how often have you heard someone disparaging a pop singer or group with the phrase "they don't even write their own songs!" That's because of The Beatles.

Another factor is that The Beatles were extraordinarily prolific. They were in the studio recording this album six days after finishing A Hard Day's Night and even the Lennon/McCartney partnership couldn't keep up with that kind of pace: hence the reliance on covers. Anyway, this is all by-the-by: Beatles For Sale is a strong album and contains two of my favourite Beatles songs: "Eight Days a Week" and "Every Little Thing". The so-called "Lennon trilogy" at the start of the album also marks a change in The Beatles' sound, moving from upbeat pop-rock to something a little more introspective and sombre.

Help! part 1:



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Listening to this album, it almost doesn't feel like the same band that did Please Please Me even though we're only two years on. The Beatles' sound has now become more melancholy and soulful, epitomised by "Yesterday". They feel less like a zany new pop group and more like old hands now - which is crazy because, as I said, this is only two years after their debut album. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" always feels really out of place to me, but it's probably pretty obvious that I'm not too fond of covers at this stage anyway.

Rubber Soul part 1:



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Now we're pretty much firmly entrenched in melodic folk-rock. Some of the early songs on this album could easily be by Bob Dylan or The Byrds. Only on a couple of songs - "Drive My Car", "In My Life" and "Wait" - do you still get that 'early Beatles' vibe but, interestingly, "In My Life" also really reminds me of Wings (I think it's McCartney's warble at the end). It's a Lennon song, but it just really feels like a transition point between early and late Beatles to me. The other thing about this album is how sombre it is - I think it's so much more cohesive than anything that's come before, but the overall mood is highly subdued. It feels like "an album" rather than a collection of singles and so listening to it in one go is a more rewarding experience, more so even than A Hard Day's Night which contains my favourite songs but just doesn't stand up as a complete piece of work in the same way that Rubber Soul does.

Revolver part 1:



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Now we move from folk-rock into full-fledged psychedelia, with The Beatles making more of an effort than ever to push the boundaries of their own sound and recording technology of the time. Like Rubber Soul, Revolver is better understood as a single body of work rather than a collection of hits. There are some stand out songs - "And Your Bird Can Sing", "Got To Get You Into My Life" and, of course, the haunting and iconic "Eleanor Rigby", but you really have to listen to Revolver in one go and just sort of experience it. The hooks are as catchy as ever, but it's very easy to see that The Beatles had moved way, way beyond crafting disposable pop at this stage, and had dedicated themselves to genuine artistry.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band part 1:



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So we come to Sgt. Pepper's..., which is generally agreed by anyone who knows anything to be The Beatles' magnum opus, a revolutionary piece of music-making that changed popular music forever. It is Rolling Stone's greatest album of all time. And you know what? I just don't like it that much. I like it, but not that much. I think Revolver and Rubber Soul are better albums and I like the songs on A Hard Day's Night more. Maybe I'm biased - I prefer early Beatles to late Beatles - but for me, Sgt. Pepper's... is just a bit too discordant and confusing. There are very few "hits" in there ("Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" and "With A Little Help From My Friends" are obvious exceptions - hence their enduring appeal in subsequent decades), but how often do you hear a song from this album besides those? I know it's supposed to be amazing and I'm an idiot for saying this, but I just don't rate it that highly. Sorry.

Magical Mystery Tour part 1:



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So, I wasn't going to listen to this one originally (since it's an EP, not an album) but since the second half of is composed of singles not released on albums of the period, you can't really listen to "The Beatles" without giving this one a spin. The first half is psychedelic insanity, which is always fun and the second half is, as I said, singles. There's no arguing with "Hello Goodbye", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane" and "All You Need is Love" - they're just some of the best songs ever written, so there you go. Plus "I Am The Walrus"... I would hope I don't have to say anything more about that.

INTERLUDE

My favourite Beatles' song, which isn't on any of the studio albums:

AND

NSFW, cuz it's Eminem dur.