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15 January 2007
What's your favorite Beatles album? Which one do you think is the best?
My favourite album is probably Sgt Pepper, but the disc with my favourite songs on is probably a tie between Revolver and the white album. If that makes sense.
Though the first Beatles album that really impressed me was Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. There was a lot of hype about the album during my senior year of high school, what with the 25th Anniversary and all. I got it on cassette. I still remember my joy in discovering how shifting the sound all the way over to one channel could isolate Ringo's surprisingly funky backbeat from the reprise.
Last week, I acquired a somewhat renovated mix of the album and my Pepper appreciation is starting to resurface.
And while I must've spent hours after hours that summer after graduation listening to The White Album -- a somewhat heavy-sounding dupe on a Maxell cassette, actually -- I won't call it a favorite. It is just a given, one of the undeniable blocks in the foundation of my musical taste.
I would have to listen to the Beatles a lot more than I do to have a true favorite. But I do like the songs on Abbey Road. It seems like lately I'm listening to them through the lens of the anthology stuff which is maybe divided more by eras? I don't really know, the discs aren't mine, I'm just along for the ride (literally: 'cause it's in the car on the way home from practice).
"I would have to say... The Best Of The Beatles"
/Alan Partridge
I love Abbey Road and Sgt. Peppers is pretty good as is Revolver. Abbey Road would be infinitely better without Octopus' Garden and Revolver without Yellow Submarine.
I like Revolver, but my version never had Yellow Submarine on there. Perhaps it's the US version? So it's either that or Magical Mystery Tour, mainly for Strawberry Fields and I Am The Walrus.
This will probably change tomorrow. Tomorrow never knows.
Beatles 65 is my favorite. I am old enough to remember someone putting it on in my high school cafeteria when it came out (the new Beatles albums always came out for the Christmas season).
I was more impressionable I guess but that album got my attention.
Who, me? I should say I'm not a Beatles expert or superfan or anything like that, but my favorite is probably Revolver, followed closely by Rubber Soul. Both of those wear their Dylan influence on their sleeve, and I'm fascinated by the opposing forces at play--pop songcraft versus Dylanesque wordplay and wild sonic experimentation, John versus Paul. For that matter, I'm fascinated by the differences between those two albums, especially since they were released less than a year apart.
I think the best album, though, is Abbey Road--so poignant, so adult, and such a thorough mastery of everything they'd done before.
The only good Beatles album is a dead Beatles album.
When I start my band, the Dead Beatles, that will be the name of our first album. And you will know us by the trail of the Dead Beatles. I love you but I've chosen Dead Beatles. And so on.
My favorite is Rubber Soul. It's such a brilliant album and so quintessentially Beatles. I feel like they are all well-represented on it. I begrudgingly give Sergeant Pepper the credit it is due as a fantastic album as well.
For me, the most fantastic thing about the Beatles is listening to them mature as a band album by album, and -- except right at the end -- getting better every time.
Right up until they blew your fucking mind.
All of that said, Revolver, chiefly because of Eleanor Rigby. Which despite overplay is still that kind of song.
This thread isn't as contentious as I was expecting.
So I'll go ahead and say it--Sgt. Pepper's doesn't do much for me. I don't think it hangs together well, I don't think it's aged well, and I think they could've used someone to reign in their more self-indulgent and acid-addled daydreams (George Martin having apparently abdicated that role). Yeah, they're all over the place, but to what end? If I wanted all over the place, late '60s pop/rock-wise, I'd listen to Zappa or Beefheart. In my opinion, Sgt. Pepper's is one of those albums that's more important than it is good. Don't get me wrong--I think it's good, but I also think it's one of the most overrated albums in the history of pop music.
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