Hello, and welcome to the first installment of “Starter Packs,” where I take a popular band or artist, with an exceptionally large discography, and recommend three albums to start your journey! These may not necessarily be my three favorite albums from the artist, but are simply a sampling of their music, which I feel best represents their body of work as a whole. Today, we’ll be taking a look at The Beatles. Hailed by many as the greatest rock band of all time, and one of my personal favorites, The Beatles cranked out an incredible amount of timeless, game-changing pop music in the span of only a decade. Looking at the full timeline of what this band achieved, one might not know where to begin. So now, I’ll be walking you through the three albums that I feel are the best places to start when it comes to The Beatles.
1.A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Everyone’s heard about Beatlemania. Everyone’s seen the videos of The Fab Four being chased down the street by screaming, adoring fans. Everyone’s heard the audio clip of Ed Sullivan exclaiming, “Ladies and gentlemen…The Beatles!” This was a pivotal moment in pop culture history that set the standard for what it would mean to be a pop icon. This era for the band is perhaps best represented by their 1964 album, A Hard Day’s Night. Songs such as the unforgettable “Can’t Buy Me Love” and the titular “A Hard Day’s Night” are very closely tied to this moment in history, adding an even greater importance to this album. Stacked top to bottom with some of the most infectious pop songs ever written, this album perfectly exemplifies what the hype around these four Liverpool boys was about. If you enjoy this, you’re sure to love the rest of the band’s early works as well.
2. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
It’s incredible how quickly The Beatles evolved from a heartthrob pop act to a daring, ambitious proto-prog outfit, that would open the floodgates for creative music for years to come. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the end product of perhaps the most ambitious idea The Beatles ever had, or what is now known as the “concept album.” Performing as an alter ego band of sorts, The Beatles applied everything they had learned from their previous two, equally adventurous releases, and created the most complete and cohesive album in their entire discography. Considered by many to be the single greatest album of all time, Sgt. Pepper’s revolutionized what it even meant to create an album. This was the first time in the history of popular music that full LPs were outselling singles. With this album, The Beatles set a new standard for album construction, where the album as itself functions as a coherent experience (which is obviously something I’m quite thankful for). Sgt. Pepper’s is a must-hear, not only for anyone who is trying to get into The Beatles, but for any self-respecting music lover in general. Later on in your Beatles journey, if you are interested in hearing the transitional period between the A Hard Day’s Night sound, and what they achieved here, check out Rubber Soul and Revolver as well.
3. Abbey Road (1969)
As the Beatles’ ten year run progressed, the songwriting skills of the respective members only got better and better, due in part to John Lennon’s and Paul McCartney’s mutual obsession with being better than the other. As their career as a band neared its end, this slow-burning competition culminated with 1968’s The Beatles (better known as The White Album), and 1969’s Abbey Road, two of music’s great instruction manuals in creative songwriting (and my two personal favorite Beatles albums). Ultimately, I elected to include Abbey Road in this particular list, as it is by far the most accessible of the two. Not only do Lennon and McCartney set their best feet forward with some of the band’s all time classics, such as “Come Together” and “Oh! Darling,” but we also hear two contributions from George Harrison, “Something,” and “Here Comes the Sun,” both of which stand up to anything Lennon and McCartney have ever written. We even get the ever-rare Ringo Starr composition in “Octopus’s Garden,” an irresistibly whimsical children’s song in the style of “Yellow Submarine” (but actually a much better song). And of course, we get the Lennon/McCartney songwriting duo’s crowning achievement, the “Abbey Road Medley,” an epic, proto-prog collection of short songs that takes up most of the record’s B-side. With their final record recorded (not their final record released, but that’s a story for another day), The Beatles gave us a masterpiece that exemplifies the songwriting talents of all four members to the fullest. After you sink your teeth into this record, you’ll be hungry to hear the rest of this band’s incredible catalog of work, guaranteed.
Phil Klinker Music Reviews 