By Casey Lenhart | Staff Writer
So in honor of the end of 50 year anniversaries, the Peter Jackson documentary, and just cause I’m a freaking nerd, I decided to officially make my personal ranking of Beatles albums from worst to best. I know, we’re a bit done with the Beatles at this point. From the countless remasters and reissues and remixes and that 2019 film we shall never speak of, I think we have drawn out every bit of nostalgia from The Fab Four. Still, I think it would be fun to do this for the Beatles fans at W&M out there, so here we go!!
#13: YELLOW SUBMARINE
To be honest, this feels more like a compilation/soundtrack than an actual studio album. But every Beatles ranking I see and Wikipedia say that this is an album, so okay. Minus previously released material that appears on this album (the title track, “All You Need is Love”), the rest is mostly crap. The only two songs that are worth your time are the Lennon rager “Hey Bulldog” and George’s noise freakout “It’s All too Much”. Other than that, “Only a Northern Song” is so blandly performed, the biting satire is lost on me, and Paul’s sole contribution “All Together Now” is a painfully unimaginative children’s song. It’s no “Yellow Submarine”, get it.
#12: BEATLES FOR SALE
Ok! An actual album this time. This, to me, is the Fab Four’s first real dud in their discography. I was very disappointed when I heard this album because the album cover looks so cool! Look at them, all dark and brooding on the cover. But to be honest, they look more tired, which is what this album sounds like. I heard this album was rushed when made, and it sounds like it. There are literally six covers, and none of them are that impressive. The only songs I can really take away from it are Paul’s “Eight Days a Week” and “I’ll Follow the Sun”, a proto-”Yesterday” if you will. And John’s “No Reply” makes stalking your ex-girlfriend sound like a romantic adventure!
#11: MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
NOOOOOO!!! Not another compilation! Just when I thought I had escaped Yellow Submarine I got this. Where to start with this one. Well, first off, most of the songs are previously released singles (“All You Need is Love” appears on this one too). Taking these songs off the tracklist, we encounter the group’s final swings into psychedelia, and it kind of works and it kind of doesn’t. Sure, “I Am the Walrus” is a classic and “The Fool on the Hill” rocks that penny whistle solo, and the title track is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. But apart from that, we get an interlude “Flying”, and my least favorite George song “Blue Jay Way”, where I learned two things: there is something called “too much phaser”, and that Death Grips can sample one of the worst Beatles songs and make one of the best Death Grips songs.
#10: HELP!
Gosh! The Beatles made a lot of soundtracks. To a lot of people, this album is best remembered for the title track and the go-to song for any high school unplugged show. But is Help! anything more than just those two songs? Well, sort of. There are other good songs off this album, the rhythmically hypnotic “Ticket to Ride”, the insanity boppin’ cover of “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”, and what I think is one of their most underrated gems, “The Night Before”. But apart from that, nothing else is very memorable. I would not go as far and say that any of these songs are terrible. They’re just … meh, I guess. There’s really nothing else I can say about this album. And yes, I’ve heard too many covers of “Yesterday” at unplugged concerts, and I need them to stop! Please.
#9: A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
Okay, Okay, I promise you this is the final soundtrack album. And like Help!, I have the same pros and cons of this one too. There is the iconic title track, I don’t need to gush about that song, and there is the mellow “And I Love Her” where George comes through with his signature riff. And also there is “Can’t Buy Me Love”, once again I’ll try not to gush. After those, we get some deep gems such as John rocking out on “Any Time at All” and “When I Get Home”, but the real gem is the closing track “I’ll Be Back”. Same criticisms of Help! I have for this album, there are just too many mediocre tracks that feel like filler to me. But hey, the movie was good, right?! And that’s what’s important.
#8: WITH THE BEATLES
Yay!! We’re done with the soundtracks and the compilations and the whatnots. Now we can get serious, like this album art over here. I think this album proved that the Beatles weren't just any ordinary boy band. They lay down what I think is their best cover ever, “You Really Got a Hold on Me”, where we get to see a rarity of John and George co-singing. That’s not the only cover that goes hard on this album. “Money (That’s What I Want)” speaks cold hard facts, “Roll Over Beethoven” does Chuck Berry proud, and “Please Mr. Postman” shows us the importance of the mail (that’s about as political as we’re gonna get in this, so treasure that chuckle). And we almost forgot Ringo’s little jam “I Wanna Be Your Man” and Paul’s cuteness on “All My Loving”. My cons might be that the rest of the songs are a bit filler, and George’s first song “Don’t Bother Me” doesn’t prove his eventual worth. But I do think this album is worth your time, if you want to listen to what that Beatlemania was all about.
#7: PLEASE PLEASE ME
Ah, the debut. I think this album has to be the group’s rawest collection of songs. There’s no fancy production, just the group playing their setlist one by one, and what a setlist it is. We get the opening track “I Saw Her Standing There” which was probably Roy Moore’s theme song (Ok that’s the final time, I swear, I didn’t mean to ruin the song). This also has the group’s best cover selection. “Misery”, “Chains”, and “Anna (Go to Him)” all seem completely effortless in their performance and energy, it seems second-hand sometimes. And then there’s the closer “Twist and Shout” which probably has my favorite John vocal performance ever. We also can’t forget their first hits, the title track and “Love Me Do”, and the ‘sha-la-la’s’ of “Baby It’s You”. Once again, the filler bogs the album down a bit, but if you want to see how it all started, give this a listen.
#6: LET IT BE
Well, I guess I deserve those boos. Yet another soundtrack album by the Fab Four, but this time it’s a documentary. If we were just going to line up the albums chronologically by release date, then Let it Be is quite a bummer way to end the party. John is barely present on this album and only contributed one song to the original project “Dig a Pony” and two stupid jams (“Dig It” and “Maggie Mae”). George brings in a nice skiffle song “For You Blue” and the waltzy “I Me Mine” but it’s kind of a regression from his musical capabilities but I can’t blame him (he brought “Isn’t it a Pity” and “All Things Must Pass” to the table and John and Paul threw it out, c’mon guys!). The saving grace for this album is “Across the Universe”, which was added so it seemed John was contributing, and Paul’s music. The monster ballads “The Long and Winding Road” and the title track give the album a lot of depth, and on top of that we get some nice bops with “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “Get Back”. Nice work, Paul!
#5: THE BEATLES
I’ll probably be murdered for this, but I think this album is a tad overrated. Like, I get why people like it a lot, some of the group’s best songs are on here. The noise rock feat of “Helter Skelter”, the bitterness on “Sexy Sadie”, the dark humour of “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, the sweetness of songs “Blackbird”, “Dear Prudence”, and “I Will”, and the rocking numbers such as “Back in the USSR” and “Birthday”. There are a lot of songs on this album, and I think two-thirds of them are great. But other than that, the album is SUCH A MESS!!! My hot take is that messiness hurts an album instead of helping it, the only exception is the Clash. But seriously, “Wild Honey Pie” is unlistenable, “Piggies” does not say much about classism, and what is “Rocky Raccoon”? What is it? And don’t get me started on “Revolution 9”. A lot of the songs seem unnecessary and only hurt this album. Also, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” is a good song, fight me!
#4: RUBBER SOUL
Following their most overrated album, I present to you their most underrated album. I can only think of one dud on this album, “Run for Your Life”, in which we see John going from stalking to threatening his ex-girlfriend. But other than that, this album is near perfect. Infidelity and revenge never sounded so sweet on “Norwegia Wood”, Paul takes on French in “Michelle”, and George comes through with his first great batch of songs “Think for Yourself” and “If I Needed Someone”. We also get the widely acclaimed “In My Life” (my dad doesn’t like the piano solo on this song, but I think it’s cool). John also starts singing about loneliness on “Nowhere Man” and “Girl”. We also see Paul getting angry for the first time with songs like “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You”. Overall, this album is a good 35 minutes of folky-rocky-poppy fun!
#3: ABBEY ROAD
Abbey Road is their final album, and boy do they go out with a bang! Here, every member of the band brings their A-game to the plate. John comes in with cool and grooving “Come Together”, the vocally haunting “Because”, and my personal favorite song off the album, the eight minute proto-doom metal-esque “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. Paul comes through with the “murder is funny” mindset with “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”, the swamp-swing of “Oh! Darling”, and the entire medley to finish up the album. Ringo gets his little tune “Octopus’s Garden” in the tracklist and it’s actually really good. But the real star of this album is George. With the most romantic song ever “Something” and the most optimistic song ever “Here Comes the Sun”, George had already proved he was a gifted songwriter, but with these two songs, that stopped being a hot take and just a straight-up fact.
#2: SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
Sgt. Pepper has had a bit of a rough year. It dropped from #1 to #24 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 2020 update list, yikes! (so it’s official, Pet Sounds is the superior album! hahahahaha!!). But seriously, just like The Beatles gets too much love, this album gets too much hate. I think it mainly comes from the fact that John, George, and Ringo didn’t like making this album because Paul was becoming kind of a control freak. But regardless, this album is the band’s craziest. From the variety show theme of the first two songs, the cacophony of “Good Morning Good Morning”, the orchestral tears of “She’s Leaving Home”, to the flat-out circus freakout that is “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”. Not only does this album have some of the band’s most creative songs, but it has their best song of all time. No, “Hey Jude” is not on this album. No, “Let it Be” is on Let it Be. I’m talking about “A Day in the Life”. I think this song is John’s crowning achievement (Take that “Imagine”!!). Maybe the new place this album has on the Rolling Stone list will be for the album’s benefit (of Mr. Kite, sorry had to do it). No longer the top dog of the critic’s list, maybe the album will become an underdog of sorts.
#1: REVOLVER
John’s favorite is The Beatles, Paul’s is Sgt. Pepper, George’s is Rubber Soul, and Ringo’s is Abbey Road. But my favorite album of theirs is Revolver! We finally made it to the end, god I need to take a break. Here we go, one last round. This album is only like 34 minutes long, and the band makes every second of it worthwhile. You have pop classics like “Eleanor Rigby”, acid-infused rock ragers like “She Said She Said” and “Doctor Robert”, power pop bangers like “And Your Bird Can Sing”, and Paul’s effortless knack for just insanely good songs like “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Got to Get You into My Life”, “For No One”, and my personal favorite “Good Day Sunshine”. George also does not disappoint with his rocking opener “Taxman” and his methodical love song “I Want to Tell You”. But John somehow feels like the winner here with one of my other personal favorites “I’m Only Sleeping” (I relate to this song on sooo many levels). On top of that, John goes full Dalai Lama mode on the strange yet spiritual backwards masterpiece “Tomorrow Never Knows”. Yeah, there’s really no bad song off this album. If someone were to ask me what Beatles album they should start on, I’d say this one. It’s got the craziness, it’s got the catchiness, and it’s got the Beatliness too!
In conclusion, I think I did a good job. I’ll probably get death threats for putting The Beatles in fifth place, but “c’est la vie” as they say. I hope you readers enjoyed this ranking and check out the band too (I hear they’re quite popular in the music scene).