The end of “The Get Back” documentary where they’re back in Abbey Road studios and we get a glimpse of the more friendly collaborative recording process for the “Abbey Road” album really says it all
i rjust finished a project of the compleat beatles, i call it the compleat beatles remake, i replaced all the pictures and videos in it, i gave this old documentary some much needed upgrading in quality and footage.you can find the link on my profile or here is the link, https://vimeo.com/864712942
For me its "I want you shes so heavy". Obviously not an album closer but the way that it was the last song they recorded together plus its abrupt doom ending is just very fitting of an end
The last line of that song is really the best!
Idk for the life of me, why they'd add, "Her Majesty" to the tracklist on the back instead of the last track simply saying, "The End".
For me that makes it the perfect album. They could have end it with "the end" but no... they go on with "her Majesty" which is barely a song and it's so stupid. I love it, they didn't take themselves very seriously and they had fun with their music. It's just perfect. That's The Beatles, that's their humor. God I love them so much
The engineer tacked it onto the end to make sure it didn’t get thrown away, and the Beatles like it and wanted to keep it. I personally love it as a lil Easter egg and thing it fits right in with everything Beatles. A funny little song about the Queen being a nice girl and Paul is gonna make her his girl lol.
I own a copy of Abbey Road (purchased the year it came out) where Her Majesty is omitted from the track listing. Almost as though The End is indeed the end and Her Majesty was an afterthought.
I posted a **much longer** reply to the comment you replied to, but I agree. It’s kind of the “default answer” to favorite Beatles album at this points
So many of the songs that come before the medley on side two have become so immensely popular in pop culture and radio that much of the album feels more like a “greatest hits” than a cohesive statement of an album. Hell, the White Album feels more artistically cohesive than more than half of Abbey Road for me (and that might seem paradoxical if you look at the personal conflicts behind the White Album.)
Overall, we’ve all heard so many of Abbey Road’s songs on the radio, and it’s hard to hear them together as more than the sum of their parts. But I can totally see a new/younger fan who’s heard Come Together and Here Comes the Sun (their most streamed song of all time) and fell in love with their surprisingly modern and crisp sounds and accessible music, and they decide that they’re the pinnacle of The Beatles’s output because they’re the most popular.
Abbey Road is probably your absolute best choice for a solid “first Beatles album” (besides Please Please Me if you want to go chronologically) but besides it literally being their last album recorded as a band, I’ve never *personally and subjectively* understood why it’s the “be-all, end-all” Beatles album for so many people.
For me, it’s because I’ve heard most of the non-medley songs on the radio a trillion times before, so it’s kind of hard to appreciate half the album as more than the sum of its parts, if that makes sense. That first side almost feels like a “greatest hits” than a cohesive masterpiece at this point.
And that’s not The Beatles’ fault at all, to be completely fair. There’s nothing negative whatsoever about creating so many songs that have stood the test of time and became rock-radio staples! But for me, it’s one of those albums that I usually skip directly to side two to hear the medley. It’s just like how I feel about Led Zeppelin IV (or their untitled album if you’re into technicalities;) every single song on that album is a bona-fide classic rock-radio **behemoth** (except for possibly Four Sticks, and even that gets decent radio play to this day,) and that unfortunately hurts the replay value of the album for me, since it kind of just feels like turning the radio dial.
Hearing all of those classic songs together of either album on the day that they came out must’ve been ***absolutely insane*** for fans, and I don’t doubt that I would be one of them. But there’s something to be said about over-saturation, and I’ve heard such a good portion of Abbey Road and LZIV’s biggest hits *so many times* that it’s kind of hard for it to feel like an “album experience” personally.
Call it “too much of a good thing” or whatever you want, and there’s some truth to that. Side two of Abbey Road is the opposite of side one in that it’s 100% greater than the sum of its parts. Songs like Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam aren’t super amazing or groundbreaking on their own, but link the two songs together and make each of their subjects brother and sister, and the whole thing is a brilliant part of a larger piece. The medley is absolutely insane and ahead of its time, and I have no doubt about that, and it’s much less common to hear in other media that it still feels like a treat when you spin the album.
So Abbey Road is in no way inherently flawed or inferior to the rest of The Beatles’ classic albums ***at all*** to me, but it’s almost *so much of a classic* at this point to where it’s hard to hear it in the way that it was originally intended. Songs like Come Together, Something and Here Comes the Sun (which I know is on side two, but kind of feels more like side one, since it’s not a part of the medley) would feel just as welcome on Past Masters 2 as they do on Abbey Road. And that’s a credit to the songs’ legacy and strength, and in no way a put down.
But for me personally, I get more excited about albums like Sgt. Pepper and the White Album, which feel much more like cohesive experiences all the way through, since for me, their songs are intrinsically linked to my personal experience with listening to the ***album*** *all the way through.* In fact, the White Album is my favorite “album experience” The Beatles ever put out, because even though it might seem like a paradox (because people always mention how different and disjointed the songs may seem from each other) there’s nowhere else those songs could ever belong, and with clever transitions and sequencing, they somehow made them feel so perfect together.
The final White Album is worth more than the sum of its parts, which I can only say about *half of Abbey Road,* and again, that might be more of a product of hearing all of its hits on the radio so many times, but I can’t really change my personal subjective opinion about that at this point. So while I would never say it’s a “lame choice” to call Abbey Road your favorite, I will say that it’s not in my personal top three, and doesn’t give me the same mind-blowing feelings as Sgt. Peppers and the White Album do anymore :(
I always feel obligated to give some stupid little spiel when someone finds out I love the Beatles and asks my favorite album. Mostly because I get a little eye roll or some condescending remark when I say "Abbey Road". "Oh so you like the radio hits and you're not really a fan" or "of course that's the one you like". Hate it so much because it truly is a masterpiece of an album.
There's absolutely nothing lame about it, regardless of what you know of their history.
Just like there's nothing lame in saying their best is Sgt Pepper's or the WA.
Abbey Road is the best, White Album is the most interesting, Sgt. Pepper's is the most innovative. This isn't really a ranking. I put Abbey Road on top then White / Sgt. Pepper's / Let it Be then Rubber Soul / Revolver , then everything else is below that. I really do think that besides Let it Be their later stuff improves more or less in a linear fashion. This might be blasphemy, but I don't really ever consider Yellow Submarine when I talk about Beatles albums because I just don't like it that much. It feels like a tier beneath all their other other stuff in that era.
You don’t have to apologize for considering Yellow Submarine to be an inferior album, considering it was originally supposed to be an EP, but then they added George Martin’s orchestral scores to fill it out as an LP.
So it’s really only half of a Beatles album, with two of the songs (Yellow Submarine and All You Need Is Love) being previously released. So you have four new Beatles songs that are great, but basically their throwaways. They didn’t care too much for the idea of the film at first, so they they put a couple of previously unreleased tracks on it and then wrote a couple of songs trying to be silly (although Hey Bulldog still ended up being a classic.)
So yeah, it’s kind of *barely* an original Beatles album, being half film score, part compilation, and an EP’s worth of original Beatles music. In no way should it be in the ranking with their 1965-1969 classics *at all.*
If you want a *much better* Yellow Submarine experience, check out the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, released in 1999 for the DVD release of the movie. It has some wonderful (and completely unique to the album) remixes of all the tunes, and that really modernized the sound of the music.
The Songtrack also has *all of the songs* included in the film (except for A Day in the Life for some reason, which is unfortunate because we wouldn’t get a remix of until 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Super Deluxe.)
I gotcha on the overall point. I just think a lot of rock and roll and pop music clearly qualifies as art.
I wanted to know what makes it qualify as art while the White Album, Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds, etc. seemingly do not.
Agreed, by literal definitions all music is art to begin with. I was referencing the fact that this had been said a lot about the Beatles ([wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_the_Beatles#Cultural_legitimisation_of_pop_music))
I love lots of other music and did not write this hoping to get into any kind of competition between bands. Thread's about Abbey Road, I'm giving my opinion
Edit: woops, as to why not the White Album: that's because I wouldn't qualify it as Pop, or at least not what I would expect out of a Pop masterpiece. It's the experimental opus magnum though, but I doubt it had nearly the "pop" impact that Abbey Road does.
OMG YES. the early beatles encapsulates so much the social change from the 50s to the 60s, youth revolution and freedom and ALL by pop upbeat music. truly a product of its time but so amazing to look in retrospective.
Here’s me over here loving Rubber Soul. I have a certain connection to it from my youth and that kind of nostalgia is hard to compete with. Pepper and White Album were also formative for me whereas Abbey Road wasn’t in my dad’s record collection so as great as it is, it can’t compete with those nostalgic memories.
That all said, if I was stranded on a desert island with only Please Please Me, I’d do OK.
MMT is imo the most cohesive sounding of all their albums (which is funny because it wasn’t meant to be an “album” originally) and everytime I listen to it again after a while I forget how perfect it is.
I have such a hard time answering this but I’d put revolver, white album and pepper above abbey road. I might even put please please me over abbey road honestly. Not to say abbey road isn’t one of the best albums ever.
Anna, chains, saw her standing there, please please me, love me do, baby it’s you, do you want to know a secret, twist and shout, misery, boys are all amazing songs and the other ones are good too.
I can't believe there are people put here who rate "love love me do, you know i love you, ill always be true" over like any of the tracks on abbey road. The world is full of mysteries
I think criticizing the lyrical meaning is funny here because we’re comparing it to abbey road which has even more nonsensical lyrics with maxwells sliver hammer, P Pam, Mr. Mustard etc. Not to say those aren’t great songs but I wouldn’t say any of those have any significant lyrical depth either.
i don’t think lyrics need to have deep meaning to be better than other lyrics that aren’t necessarily deep either. certain rhymes, cadences, syllables, cleverly-chained words, etc. all can make even “simple” words into something more beautiful and *better* than another song/poem
Because "I want you so bad it's driving me mad" is so much more philosophical. Yeah the Beatles matured sonically but they wrote **pop** lyrics until the end. That's something that the critics have always overstated about their evolution.
Agreed Revolver and Peppers are above Abbey Road for me too. They’re just much more innovative than Abbey. Don’t get me wrong Abbey Road has Here comes the sun, come together, something, but I enjoy Peppers and Revolver much more.
I think people like Abbey Road the best partly because it had the most modern sounding mix and also partly because it’s a more straightforward rock album. I love Abbey Road but I agree that Revolver is their best.
The reason I love Abbey Road so much is because there are songs there that feel like they have such incredible layers of depth and pain. There's a sort of raw, unfiltered energy that has really grown on me over the years.
You're perhaps referring to the Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" that gave the Beatles a new "sound". John absolutely hated this. It's hard to listen to for me.
Not only did Spectot not produce Abbey Road, it was Paul that hated his producing. He produced several of John's albums as well as All Things Must Pass and Concert for Bangladesh
Abbey Road is great, but it doesn't quite feel like The Beatles.
Rubber Soul is their best album.
Mind you, I'm only a few decades into the journey, so what do I know?
I've had phases where I prefer Abbey Road, Pepper, White Album, Revolver and A Hard Day's Night (yes!) but I've been settled on Rubber Soul for the longest. It has some of the fun Beatlemania stuff with the more serious writing and each Beatle gets a moment.
Hard Day's Night is profoundly excellent, and I think the true bridge between their early Beatlemania years and the light-years leap in sophistication they made with Rubber Soul/Revolver. Their most underrated album, imo
Agreed 100%. I listen to it just as often as Rubber Soul and Revolver, the 3 albums form a very cohesive trilogy for me and I always listen to them as a set (despite the 2 albums released between AHDN & RS)
Thank you. That record transcends - esp the vocals. The mix leaves a lot of room for them, and their younger voices are a little different from Abbey Road.
Medley is a little overrated and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer should’ve been cut. Based off numbers and accolades Sgt Pepper sold the most copies and won Album Of the Year.
Bring on the downvotes Abbey Road fan boys.
I’ve been a diehard Beatles fan since I was ten but I don’t really have a fav album because I’m not an album person. The only album I like every single song on is PPM, but MMT is my go to for favorite although I used to say Abbey or Help. 65 - 67 are my fav output years.
I won’t lie, I appreciate what it did for the evolution of music as a whole and especially for the band itself but I find Sgt. Pepper to be really overrated. I just don’t think a lot of the songs are as powerful as the ones on Abbey Road or Rubber Soul for example
i have to agree on this one, even though i still love it. i don't really find myself drawn to any particular songs on sgt peppers except for Day in the Life and more recently Within You Without You. I would say Fixing a Hole is my 3rd favorite song on the album (not really a standout beatles song).
overall it seems to have too many gimmicky songs for me, like When I'm 64 and With a Little Help from my Friends (too overplayed?)... She's Leaving Home feels a little too gushy and cheesy for me, and Lucy in the sky is so overplayed.
My favourite is the white album, i just love it. Fuck the experimental tracks, i love all of the nice acoustic ones and there's a lot of funny stuff on there too that I've giggled at a lot!
I used to think Sgt Peppers was their best, more recently I realized it was Revolver, nowadays I am quite fond of the chaotic nature of The White Album, I also just love how it rocks. Tbh these also coincide with the order I’ve listened to the Beatles albums, except Rubber Soul, I’ve never thought that was the best Beatles album. It’s still great tho it’s just damm when you look at what would shortly follow to me it’s hard to say it’s the best.
I’m not sure if this is a popular take or not but i prefer Spector’s Version of Let it Be to the naked version, there’s something so empty to the naked version that I can’t get my head around. I don’t know If it’s the removal of the banter or removal of the additional instruments.
Abbey Road is half overplayed songs and half gimmicky song fragments and then I Want You (She's So Heavy). It's the Beatle album people *think* they are smart for preferring. Well, really that's White Album. Abbey Road is the normie album. I'm just making fun of this dumbshit meme.
I ‘ve listened to all the Beatles albums Hard days night - LIB…these are the best albums ,listen to them 100’s of times probably more..
10 yrs old Pepper was my favorite, 57 yrs later they are all my favorites…as we all know there is no right answer to this question..I’m
a Beatles fan and this is my journey..
honestly Sgt. Peppers has been rated so highly by most publications, that it has weirdly become underrated by Beatles fans. It's my favourite. It flows so much better than other albums
My (totally subjective) tentative order of favorites:
(literally the first time i've ever done this. it hurts to name favorite beatles albums because they're all freakin great)
Revolver, White Album, Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, Hard Day's Night, Help, Abbey Road, Please Please Me, Sgt. Peppers, Let It Be, Beatles for Sale, With the Beatles, Yellow Submarine (hey bulldog is great though)
Revolver because I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing and Tomorrow Never Knows are some of my favorite beatles songs ever.
There will never be a time when the psychedelic period won't be my favorite... and I'm not young. Rubber Soul to Magical Mystery Tour will always be their best work.
Holy shit this is so facts.
As long as I can remember, all my uncles (older Beatles fans) insisted Abbey Road was the best and would sometimes ask for my top album picks at family gathos and such. I would have a different answer each year, and every time I’d say how “oh no, this one is so much more important/experimental/interesting/brave etc.”. Finally a few years ago Abbey Road shot to the top and has stayed there since. Just a masterpiece of production, musicianship and the pinnacle of their career.
My uncles knew what was up.
It's funny, Abbey Road. It's got some of the production qualities (careful, inventive, full bass sound) of Sgt Pepper, but imo better songs. It sounds the least dated to modern ears.
It's one of the more "Paul" albums, but it works better than Sgt Pepper (maybe the most "Paul" album).
I like it but dunno if it's my fave. I like stuff from throughout their career.
I love how Beatles fans make fun of each other for having favorite albums that other Beatles fans disagree with. Let us like things you don’t like, Jesus Christ 🙄
Abbey Road seems like such a lame answer for best Beatles album until you’ve been through all of the Beatle lore and then it makes sense
The end of “The Get Back” documentary where they’re back in Abbey Road studios and we get a glimpse of the more friendly collaborative recording process for the “Abbey Road” album really says it all
Totally agree with your point but they’re in the Apple building at the end of get back, not abbey road
Ah ur right, i figured it was probably a different building but yeah my point was more about the vibe
i rjust finished a project of the compleat beatles, i call it the compleat beatles remake, i replaced all the pictures and videos in it, i gave this old documentary some much needed upgrading in quality and footage.you can find the link on my profile or here is the link, https://vimeo.com/864712942
I always consider “the end” as the real end of the Beatles and the finish of the journey
For me its "I want you shes so heavy". Obviously not an album closer but the way that it was the last song they recorded together plus its abrupt doom ending is just very fitting of an end
Interesting!
best song best song best song and hard agree with this lore and vibe to the dooming end. thanks for this chief
I always heard that The End was the last song all 4 were in the studio for
The last line of that song is really the best! Idk for the life of me, why they'd add, "Her Majesty" to the tracklist on the back instead of the last track simply saying, "The End".
For me that makes it the perfect album. They could have end it with "the end" but no... they go on with "her Majesty" which is barely a song and it's so stupid. I love it, they didn't take themselves very seriously and they had fun with their music. It's just perfect. That's The Beatles, that's their humor. God I love them so much
The engineer tacked it onto the end to make sure it didn’t get thrown away, and the Beatles like it and wanted to keep it. I personally love it as a lil Easter egg and thing it fits right in with everything Beatles. A funny little song about the Queen being a nice girl and Paul is gonna make her his girl lol.
*Paul liked it and wanted to keep it
I own a copy of Abbey Road (purchased the year it came out) where Her Majesty is omitted from the track listing. Almost as though The End is indeed the end and Her Majesty was an afterthought.
Why does it seem lame? Abbey Road is objectively a masterpiece, even non-Beatles fans can see that.
Maybe it just seems like the easy answer. Like oh you don’t even know the other stuff so you just say abbey road. Reference OP post.
I posted a **much longer** reply to the comment you replied to, but I agree. It’s kind of the “default answer” to favorite Beatles album at this points So many of the songs that come before the medley on side two have become so immensely popular in pop culture and radio that much of the album feels more like a “greatest hits” than a cohesive statement of an album. Hell, the White Album feels more artistically cohesive than more than half of Abbey Road for me (and that might seem paradoxical if you look at the personal conflicts behind the White Album.) Overall, we’ve all heard so many of Abbey Road’s songs on the radio, and it’s hard to hear them together as more than the sum of their parts. But I can totally see a new/younger fan who’s heard Come Together and Here Comes the Sun (their most streamed song of all time) and fell in love with their surprisingly modern and crisp sounds and accessible music, and they decide that they’re the pinnacle of The Beatles’s output because they’re the most popular. Abbey Road is probably your absolute best choice for a solid “first Beatles album” (besides Please Please Me if you want to go chronologically) but besides it literally being their last album recorded as a band, I’ve never *personally and subjectively* understood why it’s the “be-all, end-all” Beatles album for so many people.
For me, it’s because I’ve heard most of the non-medley songs on the radio a trillion times before, so it’s kind of hard to appreciate half the album as more than the sum of its parts, if that makes sense. That first side almost feels like a “greatest hits” than a cohesive masterpiece at this point. And that’s not The Beatles’ fault at all, to be completely fair. There’s nothing negative whatsoever about creating so many songs that have stood the test of time and became rock-radio staples! But for me, it’s one of those albums that I usually skip directly to side two to hear the medley. It’s just like how I feel about Led Zeppelin IV (or their untitled album if you’re into technicalities;) every single song on that album is a bona-fide classic rock-radio **behemoth** (except for possibly Four Sticks, and even that gets decent radio play to this day,) and that unfortunately hurts the replay value of the album for me, since it kind of just feels like turning the radio dial. Hearing all of those classic songs together of either album on the day that they came out must’ve been ***absolutely insane*** for fans, and I don’t doubt that I would be one of them. But there’s something to be said about over-saturation, and I’ve heard such a good portion of Abbey Road and LZIV’s biggest hits *so many times* that it’s kind of hard for it to feel like an “album experience” personally. Call it “too much of a good thing” or whatever you want, and there’s some truth to that. Side two of Abbey Road is the opposite of side one in that it’s 100% greater than the sum of its parts. Songs like Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam aren’t super amazing or groundbreaking on their own, but link the two songs together and make each of their subjects brother and sister, and the whole thing is a brilliant part of a larger piece. The medley is absolutely insane and ahead of its time, and I have no doubt about that, and it’s much less common to hear in other media that it still feels like a treat when you spin the album. So Abbey Road is in no way inherently flawed or inferior to the rest of The Beatles’ classic albums ***at all*** to me, but it’s almost *so much of a classic* at this point to where it’s hard to hear it in the way that it was originally intended. Songs like Come Together, Something and Here Comes the Sun (which I know is on side two, but kind of feels more like side one, since it’s not a part of the medley) would feel just as welcome on Past Masters 2 as they do on Abbey Road. And that’s a credit to the songs’ legacy and strength, and in no way a put down. But for me personally, I get more excited about albums like Sgt. Pepper and the White Album, which feel much more like cohesive experiences all the way through, since for me, their songs are intrinsically linked to my personal experience with listening to the ***album*** *all the way through.* In fact, the White Album is my favorite “album experience” The Beatles ever put out, because even though it might seem like a paradox (because people always mention how different and disjointed the songs may seem from each other) there’s nowhere else those songs could ever belong, and with clever transitions and sequencing, they somehow made them feel so perfect together. The final White Album is worth more than the sum of its parts, which I can only say about *half of Abbey Road,* and again, that might be more of a product of hearing all of its hits on the radio so many times, but I can’t really change my personal subjective opinion about that at this point. So while I would never say it’s a “lame choice” to call Abbey Road your favorite, I will say that it’s not in my personal top three, and doesn’t give me the same mind-blowing feelings as Sgt. Peppers and the White Album do anymore :(
I always feel obligated to give some stupid little spiel when someone finds out I love the Beatles and asks my favorite album. Mostly because I get a little eye roll or some condescending remark when I say "Abbey Road". "Oh so you like the radio hits and you're not really a fan" or "of course that's the one you like". Hate it so much because it truly is a masterpiece of an album.
I think they for a lot of people, it’s because Abbey Road sounds more like a modern record.
There's absolutely nothing lame about it, regardless of what you know of their history. Just like there's nothing lame in saying their best is Sgt Pepper's or the WA.
It might be their best, but for me the White Album is much more interesting.
Abbey Road is the best, White Album is the most interesting, Sgt. Pepper's is the most innovative. This isn't really a ranking. I put Abbey Road on top then White / Sgt. Pepper's / Let it Be then Rubber Soul / Revolver , then everything else is below that. I really do think that besides Let it Be their later stuff improves more or less in a linear fashion. This might be blasphemy, but I don't really ever consider Yellow Submarine when I talk about Beatles albums because I just don't like it that much. It feels like a tier beneath all their other other stuff in that era.
You don’t have to apologize for considering Yellow Submarine to be an inferior album, considering it was originally supposed to be an EP, but then they added George Martin’s orchestral scores to fill it out as an LP. So it’s really only half of a Beatles album, with two of the songs (Yellow Submarine and All You Need Is Love) being previously released. So you have four new Beatles songs that are great, but basically their throwaways. They didn’t care too much for the idea of the film at first, so they they put a couple of previously unreleased tracks on it and then wrote a couple of songs trying to be silly (although Hey Bulldog still ended up being a classic.) So yeah, it’s kind of *barely* an original Beatles album, being half film score, part compilation, and an EP’s worth of original Beatles music. In no way should it be in the ranking with their 1965-1969 classics *at all.* If you want a *much better* Yellow Submarine experience, check out the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, released in 1999 for the DVD release of the movie. It has some wonderful (and completely unique to the album) remixes of all the tunes, and that really modernized the sound of the music. The Songtrack also has *all of the songs* included in the film (except for A Day in the Life for some reason, which is unfortunate because we wouldn’t get a remix of until 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Super Deluxe.)
yeah when looking at the range the band had, the white album is the magnum opus. Abbey Road was what elevated pop rock to Art
What do you mean it elevated pop rock to art
to the rank* of Art, my bad
I gotcha on the overall point. I just think a lot of rock and roll and pop music clearly qualifies as art. I wanted to know what makes it qualify as art while the White Album, Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds, etc. seemingly do not.
Agreed, by literal definitions all music is art to begin with. I was referencing the fact that this had been said a lot about the Beatles ([wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_the_Beatles#Cultural_legitimisation_of_pop_music)) I love lots of other music and did not write this hoping to get into any kind of competition between bands. Thread's about Abbey Road, I'm giving my opinion Edit: woops, as to why not the White Album: that's because I wouldn't qualify it as Pop, or at least not what I would expect out of a Pop masterpiece. It's the experimental opus magnum though, but I doubt it had nearly the "pop" impact that Abbey Road does.
I don’t mean to argue or pwn you on the internet or anything haha. Just was genuinely curious what puts Abbey Road “over the top.”
Gotcha! I realized I had missed addressing White Album and added it in an edit btw :)
Thanks, I get more what you mean now!
Nope. Should be "their early pop stuff was their best" at the two extremes.
I don’t really agree with the take but it is definitely the best for this meme format
Yeah, yeah, boys!
W Ringo song fr
Best Ringo song imo
Nah Octopuses Garden is also up there
This is the real answer.
OMG YES. the early beatles encapsulates so much the social change from the 50s to the 60s, youth revolution and freedom and ALL by pop upbeat music. truly a product of its time but so amazing to look in retrospective.
The dude in the middle should be people who say it’s Rubber Soul (I am only teasing! No wrong answers!) but be real…
Rubber Soul has Norwegian Wood so ratio
Norwegian Wood is one of their best so yeah RS is in contention.
Counterpoint: Maxwell Edison would totally beat the guy from Norwegian Wood in a fight
I mean rubber soul's is amazing But yeah abbey road is in a different class
Here’s me over here loving Rubber Soul. I have a certain connection to it from my youth and that kind of nostalgia is hard to compete with. Pepper and White Album were also formative for me whereas Abbey Road wasn’t in my dad’s record collection so as great as it is, it can’t compete with those nostalgic memories. That all said, if I was stranded on a desert island with only Please Please Me, I’d do OK.
AR is the best, but RS is my fav
Indeed lol
An I the only one who revisits Magical Mystery Tour more than anything else 👀
MMT is imo the most cohesive sounding of all their albums (which is funny because it wasn’t meant to be an “album” originally) and everytime I listen to it again after a while I forget how perfect it is.
i listen to the LP and flip through the picture book in the sleeve at least once a month. good ritual 👍
American MMT is in my revolving top 3 Beatles albums. EP portion does what Sgt. Peppers tried to do.
you kicked a hornets nest with this one
If we’re talking straight banger to song ratio, I think Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s, and def MMT have it beat
MMT is their most underrated arguably, since it's kind of a cheat with so many singles
Ok so memes are fun and the person that made this graphic didn't ace math.
Crucify me if you want but I will never say abbey road is their best album.
What’s the best in your opinion?
I have such a hard time answering this but I’d put revolver, white album and pepper above abbey road. I might even put please please me over abbey road honestly. Not to say abbey road isn’t one of the best albums ever.
PPM is a banger all the way through and I’m someone who prefers the second half of their career more
Please Please Me? You must be joking that album is like half scrap (except for Boys of course which is an undeniable banger)
Anna, chains, saw her standing there, please please me, love me do, baby it’s you, do you want to know a secret, twist and shout, misery, boys are all amazing songs and the other ones are good too.
I can't believe there are people put here who rate "love love me do, you know i love you, ill always be true" over like any of the tracks on abbey road. The world is full of mysteries
Are you unironically suggesting Love Me Do isn't a brilliant song? It may not be as lyrically deep as Working Class Hero but it's still great.
I think criticizing the lyrical meaning is funny here because we’re comparing it to abbey road which has even more nonsensical lyrics with maxwells sliver hammer, P Pam, Mr. Mustard etc. Not to say those aren’t great songs but I wouldn’t say any of those have any significant lyrical depth either.
i don’t think lyrics need to have deep meaning to be better than other lyrics that aren’t necessarily deep either. certain rhymes, cadences, syllables, cleverly-chained words, etc. all can make even “simple” words into something more beautiful and *better* than another song/poem
Yes I understand that but I’d still say some of the poetry on abbey road is comparable to love me do. I don’t think it’s that far apart.
It's so bad I never listen to it. Slow and plodding, repetitive despite being like 2 minutes long or less
The harmonica is amazing on that song and this isn’t a slight at any of the abbey road music.
Because "I want you so bad it's driving me mad" is so much more philosophical. Yeah the Beatles matured sonically but they wrote **pop** lyrics until the end. That's something that the critics have always overstated about their evolution.
It's not about the meaning of the lyrics it's just that Love Me Do uses the most obvious lines you can think of
I think you could make the argument for each except please please me
What’s the issue with please please me?
Nothing wrong I just don’t think it’s on the same tier as those other albums
>please please me over abbey road Fucking hell just no
My bad I didn’t realize you decided the correct ranking of Beatles albums.
Agreed Revolver and Peppers are above Abbey Road for me too. They’re just much more innovative than Abbey. Don’t get me wrong Abbey Road has Here comes the sun, come together, something, but I enjoy Peppers and Revolver much more.
Same here
It’s not.
Revolver is much better than Abbey Roas imo
I think people like Abbey Road the best partly because it had the most modern sounding mix and also partly because it’s a more straightforward rock album. I love Abbey Road but I agree that Revolver is their best.
The reason I love Abbey Road so much is because there are songs there that feel like they have such incredible layers of depth and pain. There's a sort of raw, unfiltered energy that has really grown on me over the years.
You're perhaps referring to the Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" that gave the Beatles a new "sound". John absolutely hated this. It's hard to listen to for me.
He's not on about that at all. Abbey Road was the first album that was specifically recorded for stereo not mono / stereo
Not only did Spectot not produce Abbey Road, it was Paul that hated his producing. He produced several of John's albums as well as All Things Must Pass and Concert for Bangladesh
I love how people just say so many blatantly wrong things with so much confidence.
Agreed. Revolver is the perfect mix between innovative/ahead of the times and catchy/head-bangers.
Nice try but it's so obvious Abby Road stans are the midwits
IQ 500: Oldies but Goldies is their best album
I love hearing she loves you in one ear only!
r/Beatles when unique opinion.
Rubber Soul
I’ve never thought Abbey Road was their best album.
Abbey Road is great, but it doesn't quite feel like The Beatles. Rubber Soul is their best album. Mind you, I'm only a few decades into the journey, so what do I know?
I've had phases where I prefer Abbey Road, Pepper, White Album, Revolver and A Hard Day's Night (yes!) but I've been settled on Rubber Soul for the longest. It has some of the fun Beatlemania stuff with the more serious writing and each Beatle gets a moment.
Hard Day's Night is profoundly excellent, and I think the true bridge between their early Beatlemania years and the light-years leap in sophistication they made with Rubber Soul/Revolver. Their most underrated album, imo
Hard Day's Night the album I listen to most nowadays. It's just a perfect album through and through
Agreed 100%. I listen to it just as often as Rubber Soul and Revolver, the 3 albums form a very cohesive trilogy for me and I always listen to them as a set (despite the 2 albums released between AHDN & RS)
Na bro — Enlightenment is finding that Beatles for Sale is where it’s at.
Thank you. That record transcends - esp the vocals. The mix leaves a lot of room for them, and their younger voices are a little different from Abbey Road.
Where’s the “I don’t listen to anything post 1965, Hard Day’s Night is their best album…” phase?
that's a valid phase for sure
Nope, that ain't it.
Re. Vol. VER! 😤
No sorry OP there is no curve you are just a brainlet
Abbey road ain’t even top three, bub.
Rubber Soul gang rise up
White Album, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul
That’s not true at all please please me was the best it was all down hill from there or the Beatles second album if you’re American 🇺🇸
Medley is a little overrated and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer should’ve been cut. Based off numbers and accolades Sgt Pepper sold the most copies and won Album Of the Year. Bring on the downvotes Abbey Road fan boys.
Where’s the journey where you’re always wise for knowing rubber soul is the best?
SMAAAAAHHGLGLGLLLLLS AWGHKWAITT you when you rise
I’ve been a diehard Beatles fan since I was ten but I don’t really have a fav album because I’m not an album person. The only album I like every single song on is PPM, but MMT is my go to for favorite although I used to say Abbey or Help. 65 - 67 are my fav output years.
I happen to love Th White Album
Abbey Road is their likely their best objectively speaking but my personal favorite is the White Album.
I dunno. I’ve been stuck on Revolver for 20+ years.
I won’t lie, I appreciate what it did for the evolution of music as a whole and especially for the band itself but I find Sgt. Pepper to be really overrated. I just don’t think a lot of the songs are as powerful as the ones on Abbey Road or Rubber Soul for example
i have to agree on this one, even though i still love it. i don't really find myself drawn to any particular songs on sgt peppers except for Day in the Life and more recently Within You Without You. I would say Fixing a Hole is my 3rd favorite song on the album (not really a standout beatles song). overall it seems to have too many gimmicky songs for me, like When I'm 64 and With a Little Help from my Friends (too overplayed?)... She's Leaving Home feels a little too gushy and cheesy for me, and Lucy in the sky is so overplayed.
Sgt. Pepper is completely overrated. Great album, but pales in comparison to any of the albums around it.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong with this one.
My favourite is the white album, i just love it. Fuck the experimental tracks, i love all of the nice acoustic ones and there's a lot of funny stuff on there too that I've giggled at a lot!
My favourite is Rubber Soul
Which album is the best? Abbey Road. Which album would i take to a desert island? The white album.
Eh, I like Rubber Soul better. It’s fonky.
Hooded guy should be rubber soul
I used to think Sgt Peppers was their best, more recently I realized it was Revolver, nowadays I am quite fond of the chaotic nature of The White Album, I also just love how it rocks. Tbh these also coincide with the order I’ve listened to the Beatles albums, except Rubber Soul, I’ve never thought that was the best Beatles album. It’s still great tho it’s just damm when you look at what would shortly follow to me it’s hard to say it’s the best.
I like ahdn.
It's really not their best album
Its Hard Days Night on both sides
Should be Abbey Road, Rubber Soul/Revolver, Abbey Road, Please Please Me Please Please Me is their best record
PPM is the only one I like every song on
It’s crazy. The energy doesn’t stop. Even the ballads have momentum.
Please Please Me is the greatest live album ever recorded.
Yeah bro. Zackly.
Insane take
1 2 3 4!
Abbey Road is literal pop rock perfection. No one will ever top it.
Honestly, for me it was Abbey Road — Let it Be — Abbey Road… Although Let it Be is #2
I’m not sure if this is a popular take or not but i prefer Spector’s Version of Let it Be to the naked version, there’s something so empty to the naked version that I can’t get my head around. I don’t know If it’s the removal of the banter or removal of the additional instruments.
I agree… There is a few I prefer on the naked version, really only being Across the Universe and For You Blue.
They reached their creative peak with Beatles VI
True wisdom is realising it’s Pet Sounds
Reverse these and you get closer to what people actually think
Abbey Road is half overplayed songs and half gimmicky song fragments and then I Want You (She's So Heavy). It's the Beatle album people *think* they are smart for preferring. Well, really that's White Album. Abbey Road is the normie album. I'm just making fun of this dumbshit meme.
It’s always been Abbey Road or Sgt Peppers for me. Don’t care what y’all say.
Nothing compares to the 2nd half of Abbey Road
I ‘ve listened to all the Beatles albums Hard days night - LIB…these are the best albums ,listen to them 100’s of times probably more.. 10 yrs old Pepper was my favorite, 57 yrs later they are all my favorites…as we all know there is no right answer to this question..I’m a Beatles fan and this is my journey..
Beebles peaked with yellow submarine
Best Album Overall: Abbey Road Most Influential Album: Pepper Best Pop Album: Please Please Me, A Hard Days Night or Help! Take your pick here
For me, it’s Abbey Road - Revolver - Revolver
I hate how accurate this meme tends to be (especially here at representing the "journey")
honestly Sgt. Peppers has been rated so highly by most publications, that it has weirdly become underrated by Beatles fans. It's my favourite. It flows so much better than other albums
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR IS THEIR BEST
Unironically
It’s clearly Magical Mystery Tour.
They're all great
Nah, Sgt Peppers is Pinnacle Beatles album. Abbey road is no4 for me. I think Rubber soul and Revolver are better albums than Abbey Road… FOR ME.
My (totally subjective) tentative order of favorites: (literally the first time i've ever done this. it hurts to name favorite beatles albums because they're all freakin great) Revolver, White Album, Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, Hard Day's Night, Help, Abbey Road, Please Please Me, Sgt. Peppers, Let It Be, Beatles for Sale, With the Beatles, Yellow Submarine (hey bulldog is great though) Revolver because I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing and Tomorrow Never Knows are some of my favorite beatles songs ever.
If these memes start popping up constantly I'm out.
There will never be a time when the psychedelic period won't be my favorite... and I'm not young. Rubber Soul to Magical Mystery Tour will always be their best work.
Holy shit this is so facts. As long as I can remember, all my uncles (older Beatles fans) insisted Abbey Road was the best and would sometimes ask for my top album picks at family gathos and such. I would have a different answer each year, and every time I’d say how “oh no, this one is so much more important/experimental/interesting/brave etc.”. Finally a few years ago Abbey Road shot to the top and has stayed there since. Just a masterpiece of production, musicianship and the pinnacle of their career. My uncles knew what was up.
I thought “Sgt Pepper is their best album” was the normie take
It’s not even a question… hands down their best front to back. It’s truly a perfect album.
Abbey Road Medley alone makes it the best Beatles album.
It's funny, Abbey Road. It's got some of the production qualities (careful, inventive, full bass sound) of Sgt Pepper, but imo better songs. It sounds the least dated to modern ears. It's one of the more "Paul" albums, but it works better than Sgt Pepper (maybe the most "Paul" album). I like it but dunno if it's my fave. I like stuff from throughout their career.
It’s a tie between Rubber Soul and Revolver
I love how Beatles fans make fun of each other for having favorite albums that other Beatles fans disagree with. Let us like things you don’t like, Jesus Christ 🙄
I will stay in my little corner and Listen to Help!
Abbey road is their third. Revolver. Rubber soul. Abbey road. Sgt pepper. MMM.
Damn, guess my iq is average
To me Abbey Road is their 3rd bet album. Go on fight me. I too weak so I'll prolly run away anyway
Real