I read our tags on that beatles post and I suddenly thought, she's right. I've always said they suck, but I cant actually name many songs by them. What do you consider their best work? What should I check out?
So an accurate answer would probably have to depend on what sort of music you normally like, which obviously I don't know. So! I shall instead ramble on about my personal favourites and you never know, some of it might be useful. If you want to jump straight in and just listen to an album, though, the easy recommendation is the White Album.
Also for the most part I am not going to give the mini-essay I have locked and loaded at all times about the musical theory behind the Beatles' success because this is not that sort of post, but there will probably be bits here and there.
The Early Stuff - Please Please Me to Beatles for Sale
Though, that's actually because most of it isn't theirs. It was very much the fashion in the 60s to do a couple of songs that were your own, and otherwise a shit ton of covers. That's also one of the big things that shaped jazz music as a genre, because Spotify didn't exist yet and if you wanted to hear a favourite song, for most non-rich folks you had to ask the live band entertaining you in the dance hall to play it for you; it was a while before everyone owned a record player.
This was also true in pop/rock and roll for a long time. So, for the first four albums, you get a couple of fairly iconic songs, and then a ton of filler; something they stopped doing from Help! onwards. Partly because, as I say, the songwriting team of Lennon-McCartney was a level of productive that is vanishingly rare - they were constantly writing new songs and trying new things, both together and alone. Those mad lads produced a full album a year for a decade, like. Absolute scenes.
(Though, there's an interesting old story from that period - one of the songs they covered on their first album was Twist and Shout, and afterwards John Lennon said they shouldn't have done it because it was a song totally entrenched in black culture and he felt it lacked its deeper meaning when covered by four white guys. Which is an interestingly progressive take from a deeply flawed white English 19-year-old in 1963.)
Anyway, in all honesty, there's only one song from those first albums that I actually love, therefore, and that's the absolute swinging sixties banger that is I Saw Her Standing There. There are others of note I suppose, but like a lot of artists, it's Early Work Stuff - they hadn't quite cracked the winning formula yet.
The Good Stuff - Help! to Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
No more covers lads we are LOCKED IN we are MAKING MUSIC we have CRACKED THE SYSTEM
Even so there's a real gradient from start to end as their sound evolved here. Towards the end they started getting experimental in a big way, but even at the start, they'd found the winning formula, so to speak.
Help! is very classic 60s. It's also I believe the origin of the Paul Is Dead conspiracy theories, because the semaphore on the cover was chosen to look good rather than spell "Help", and deranged fans are the same the world over. My personal pick from this one is I've Just Seen a Face, which is super fun to sing because of its tempo and deceptively tricky chorus melody.
(Side note - this is the album that gave us Yesterday. Not my fave, but I must admit that if you like singer songwriters, it's a fucking banger.)
Rubber Soul is where they were allowed their own musical direction, rather than having to just follow the recording conventions of the day, and from there onwards shit starts to get real. There are a LOT of different influences there, folk, baroque, Indian... They really loved African American soul, and started working with a lot of musicians/producers from that world around then. And, like. Named the album in its honour - "Rubber Soul" is a pun. Also, and importantly, this was a turning point - while they weren't the only artists to ever do this, this was the point they stopped thinking about an album as being a collection of singles, and started thinking about an album as being a complete unit of art in and of itself, and that had an enormous influence on both their own work and the wider industry.
I like this album - but, I wouldn't necessarily blindly suggest any of these. Not unless I knew what sort of music you like. There's psychedelic stuff on there, there's baroque stuff, there's the start of comedy/pastiche stuff, but for my money, nothing I personally find exceptional.
Revolver, though, has a few. This is where George Harrison fell in love with Indian culture, became a Hare Krishna, got yelled at on national television by a furious bellowing white Christian for using his fame and status to bring Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to the UK to corrupt the youth with (checks notes) meditation, and started seriously incorporating Indian instruments and musical techniques into his work. His big contribution here is Love You To, which he recorded using Asian musicians and no John Lennon. Also, three of the Beatles were on acid, and the fourth (McCartney) was vehemently against it, so the arguments were starting. The upshot of this is that they arranged and rearranged each song even while recording, so you get some truly impressive stuff.
Eleanor Rigby is famous, but for good reason. You know how most music is written in a key? Major key, minor key, etc? Eleanor Rigby is written in a mode instead. For pure fun, I'll also add Got to Get You Into My Life; great summer song
This is an early example of a concept album. The opening song is Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band being introduced to an audience; the subsequent songs are supposedly sung by this fictional band; then it finishes on a reprise of the first where the band say goodbye. It's incredibly varied - it's got vaudeville, circus, Indian and Western traditions, psychedelia, avant-garde, and a ton more besides; and so, this is where I start giving a lot more recs.
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is a song I fell in love with as a teenager, and it fucking slaps. You feel like you're in the circus itself. You can smell the sawdust. You can feel the lurking horror clowns. Within You Without You, by contrast, is George Harrison going full Hare Krishna influence-meets-pop. When I'm Sixty-Four is perfect Paul McCartney pastiche. It's worth listening to all three, and remembering they're on the same album.
The Amazing Stuff - Magical Mystery Tour to Let It Be
THIS IS THE BEST ERA I mean they hated each other during it. Boy howdy but there are some STORIES. But what you therefore get is multiple different musical directions at once, from people who had by then honed their craft. George Harrison really came into his own in this era. Ringo was also there.
Magical Mystery Tour was mostly the soundtrack to the film of the same name, with a couple of additions. It's got some bangers. The obvious one is the Fool on the Hill. Harrison's final psychedelic song before he gave up the drugs was Blue Jay Way.
But then, of course, we get the greatest work - the White Album. Written largely while they were on a meditation retreat in India - they seriously clashed by then, but John Lennon would clandestinely sneak into McCartney's room when they were supposed to be meditating and they would write and write and write (and presumably fuck nasty). Famously considered one of the greatest albums of all time, which is truly impressive, given that it contains multiple songs recorded by only one Beatle because he wasn't talking to any of the others (this happened with more than one Beatle), and part way through recording Ringo Starr actually left the band for two weeks.
While my Guitar Gently Weeps. One of the greatest songs ever written by anyone in any genre. Regina Spektor did an amazing cover for the film Kubo and the Two Strings.
Piggies. YOU WILL LOVE THIS ONE. LISTEN TO THE LYRICS YOU WILL LOVE IT
Back in the USSR - the bootlegged underground hit in the Soviet Union, done as a parody of 'Back in the USA' and the Beach Boys
Blackbird. Just beautiful.
Rocky Raccoon. The Marvel character is named after this song
I could go on, I've missed a few I suspect I have done a disservice, but try those on for size.
Yellow Submarine - no stand-out song on this one tbh. Not in my view, anyway. The song Yellow Sub is fun, I suppose.
Abbey Road - the final one they recorded (the penultimate one released.) Banger after banger. Come Together has been heavily covered, but it's worth hearing the original; maybe one of the rockiest songs they ever made, though there are a few on the album in a similar vein (Oh! Darling and I Want You (She's So Heavy) both count here). McCartney's comic pastiche offering this time is Maxwell's Silver Hammer is about a serial killer who even kills the judge in his own trial. Because is a piece written around Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata's chords played backwards by Yoko Ono. And of course, the album finishes with a 16-minute medley of about 8 combined fragmentary songs, most of which are amazing, and finishing with a song called The End that featured all of them - even Ringo - doing a solo each.
And then, Let It Be - the final released album before they disbanded. It's not their best work, but Get Back is another that's been covered a lot, and is worth hearing. It was also the star of their rooftop concert. Personally, though, I'm a fan of two others here: Dig a Pony, written by Lennon for Yoko Ono except he then decided he hated it and called it a piece of garbage; and, my favourite, George Harrison's I Me Mine, which was ostensibly based on Hindu teachings about selfishness but nakedly actually about his stupid fucking bandmates and their stupid fucking squabbles and presumably led to a lot of foot shuffling and zero eye contact during the recording. And, of course, shout out to Let It Be, the song itself. Massive tune.
ANYWAY. I hope somewhere in there is a useful answer! But as I say, if you just want to give one album a go, choose either the White Album or Abbey Road, I would. See if anything sticks.
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