Pollin' The Beatles

[hypehat]

BTW, all of you voting White Album - have you heard the 1968 demos bootleg? Listening to it right now, love the vibe of those Esher demos.

[buddhahat]

White album all the way.

After that it's a close run between MMT and A Hard Day's Night ...

[buddhahat]

BTW, all of you voting White Album - have you heard the 1968 demos bootleg? Listening to it right now, love the vibe of those Esher demos.

Yes what a stunning boot. Haven't listened to it in a while. You've inspired me to dig it out again. That's a magical time - when The Beatles get back from India and are demoing their new songs on acoustic guitars. Doesn't get much better than that!

[joshferrell]

Flabby Road for all you Flabby people out there..


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[Alex]

Please Rut Me, with Yellow Submarine Sandwich at a close second. C-H-E-E-S-E-A-N-D-O-N-I-O-N-S baby!!!

[cablegeddon]

The avant-gardists and hippies all voted for White album and Abbey Road. These are the same people that say that BW's best song is "A Day in the Life of a Tree".  Right?

Magical Mystery Tour is not a real album and how could you compare a double album to the others?? In all fairness!

Why is not a "real" album? Because it contains outtakes and singles in adddition to tracks for the special?

It's a singles collection, the band members never wanted to release it.

Yet it is still on every discography list as a proper album anyway. *shrugs*

apologist

Boy, throw the Americans a bone here. Everyone knows that as great as they were, it was their popularity in the U.S. that made them rock gods. That would never had happened had it not been for American Beatlemania.

Beatlemania would have been even bigger and better if the british albums were released in America. 

[RadBooley]

Abbey Road! Followed by Revolver and Magical Mystery Tour. Sgt. Pepper's ain't bad either, though I've never been able to make it all the way through the White Album.

[hypehat]

The avant-gardists and hippies all voted for White album and Abbey Road. These are the same people that say that BW's best song is "A Day in the Life of a Tree".  Right?

Magical Mystery Tour is not a real album and how could you compare a double album to the others?? In all fairness!

Why is not a "real" album? Because it contains outtakes and singles in adddition to tracks for the special?

It's a singles collection, the band members never wanted to release it.

Yet it is still on every discography list as a proper album anyway. *shrugs*

apologist

Boy, throw the Americans a bone here. Everyone knows that as great as they were, it was their popularity in the U.S. that made them rock gods. That would never had happened had it not been for American Beatlemania.

Beatlemania would have been even bigger and better if the british albums were released in America. 

How could you get bigger than The Beatles in 60's?!

[rab2591]

Magical Mystery Tour.

[Myk Luhv]

I'd have to throw down for Rubber Soul or Revolver. Perhaps it's because I never seriously got into The Beatles like almost everyone else has but some part of me thinks from Sgt. Pepper's... onward their experimentalism outweighed their songwriting proper, the end result being a lot of songs that sound half-finished (if not half-baked) but have a lot of production to make that seem less apparent. (Though I'd be a fool to say some of these songs, and others besides, are not still good listenin'.) Also, I was listening to "Strawberry Fields Forever" a while ago and I realised two things about it I had not previously been aware of: first, that the drum track and Mellotron riff are super cool; second, that the lyrics are incredibly stupid they become simply funny -- as if the music didn't make John's drug use evident enough, haha.

edit: And yes, I do realise this is rich coming from a Beach Boys fan, the group with the legendary unfinished album of half-finished or -baked songs!

[SMiLE-addict]

Rubber Soul, in part because this album IMO featured Lennon's best 3 songs:

1. Girl
2. Nowhere Man
3. In My Life

I've probably listened to this album a hundred times over the past 25+ years and have yet to get sick of it.

[hypehat]

I can't decide what to vote for!


It's Help! vs. Rubber Soul vs. Sgt. Pepper vs. Abbey Road.

(Hard Day's Night and Revolver not quite doing it for me at crunch time, probably due to prerponderance of B grade material. White Album, has previously stated, has Ob La Di Ob La Da on it and can thus get f***ed).


So....

Help! - in the good corner, we have Help, Yesterday, The Night Before, Ticket to Ride, I've Just Seen A Face, I Need You. In the dud corner, we have Yesterday, Another Girl, Act Naturally (I love Ringo but come on), Dizzy Miss Lizzy (although they sound huge - two note guitar riff FTW). It's probably the best they got as the 'rock band' sound for me, and it has a nice vibe.

Rubber Soul - Probably quicker to list what I don't fucks with - Run For Your Life (seems a damp squib to end it on, as well as the usual concerns), What Goes On (I prefer Sufjan Stevens' nuts cover, here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNmPCcaFPbM). That's it. And everyone is on incredible form, here. George's songs are particular highlights.

Pepper - It was the album that made me love them. Fixing A Hole, Getting Better, She's Leaving Home, LSD, Day In The Life, Within Without You. It's a wonderful vibe, probably their best 'album' album - it's got great flow. And it is also probably my favourite production.

Abbey Road - a lot I don't f*** with here, too (maxwell's fuckin silver hammer). But the highs are ridiculous. Something, The Medley, I Want You, Come Together, Octopus's Garden (I love that), Here Comes The Sun. It does seem like Paul's manifesto, though.

Going to have to go for Pepper for strictly emotional reasons, although Rubber Soul is probably 'better'.

[MBE]

For me I like from top to bottom. All of them are exceptional except maybe Yellow Submarine. I like what they did with it in 1999 better.
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Help
Beatles For Sale
With The Beatles
Magical Mystery Tour
Please Please Me
A Hard Days Night
The White Album
Pepper
Let It Be
Abbey Road
Yellow Submarine

[Phoenix]

Growing up it was Abbey Road by a wide margin but it's been Revolver for years now and still is.

[Amanda Hart]

White Album, has previously stated, has Ob La Di Ob La Da on it and can thus get f***ed

I'm surprised to see the White Album getting so much love from everyone. I like the White Album, but it's probably not in the top half of Beatles albums for me.

I voted for Revolver. It hits the mark for me on song writing and production/experimentation. Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road are close, but I just like Revolver better.

[Jason]

The Beatles? Are they some kind of Britpop band? I bet they aren't as good as Oasis!

[blank]

I can't decide what to vote for!


It's Help! vs. Rubber Soul vs. Sgt. Pepper vs. Abbey Road.

(Hard Day's Night and Revolver not quite doing it for me at crunch time, probably due to prerponderance of B grade material. White Album, has previously stated, has Ob La Di Ob La Da on it and can thus get f***ed).


So....

Help! - in the good corner, we have Help, Yesterday, The Night Before, Ticket to Ride, I've Just Seen A Face, I Need You. In the dud corner, we have Yesterday, Another Girl, Act Naturally (I love Ringo but come on), Dizzy Miss Lizzy (although they sound huge - two note guitar riff FTW). It's probably the best they got as the 'rock band' sound for me, and it has a nice vibe.

Rubber Soul - Probably quicker to list what I don't f***s with - Run For Your Life (seems a damp squib to end it on, as well as the usual concerns), What Goes On (I prefer Sufjan Stevens' nuts cover, here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNmPCcaFPbM). That's it. And everyone is on incredible form, here. George's songs are particular highlights.

Pepper - It was the album that made me love them. Fixing A Hole, Getting Better, She's Leaving Home, LSD, Day In The Life, Within Without You. It's a wonderful vibe, probably their best 'album' album - it's got great flow. And it is also probably my favourite production.

Abbey Road - a lot I don't f*** with here, too (maxwell's f***in silver hammer). But the highs are ridiculous. Something, The Medley, I Want You, Come Together, Octopus's Garden (I love that), Here Comes The Sun. It does seem like Paul's manifesto, though.

Going to have to go for Pepper for strictly emotional reasons, although Rubber Soul is probably 'better'.

Well said by hypehat - I agree with his breakdown.

It's Sgt. Pepper for me, too.  It's definitely the easiest listen - as Paul described, "I was into clean sounds - maybe a Beach Boy influence at that point."  It's got that wonderful clean warmth to it that, in my experience, is only matched by Nilsson's "The Point" and Pet Sounds.

[Mike's Beard]

I've always loved the White album and Abbey Road since I first bought them back when I was 14 and still lived under the delusion that The Beatles were the best band of all time.

[Paulos]

The Beatles? Are they some kind of Britpop band? I bet they aren't as good as Oasis!

The Beatles wish they were as good as Oasis.

Magical Mystery Tour for me, love it.

[Mark Howell]

Abbey Road, without a doubt.

Boom.

[SunnyDownSnuff]

I'm 100% Abbey Road. It's my favorite album of all time. My vote for the unquestionable masterpiece above everything else I've ever heard. Been so since I first heard it when I was nine or ten. We were on vacation in Puerto Rico, and I think I listened to it everyday. It still makes me happy to listen to it, even though I don't do it enough.


On an unrelated point, I think that Sgt. Pepper's is the worst of The Beatles' "classic" albums (Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, The White Album, and Abbey Road). That's not to say that I don't like it, it's still a five star album. I used to like it less, and I've come around on it a bit more, but I still don't totally see why people think it's the best album ever. As baroque pop albums go, I think that Pet Sounds and Revolver are fuller albums, less caught up in themselves. Sgt. Pepper's seems, at least to me, to be an example of one of those albums where they say, "Hey, look what we can do!" Also, I don't think it's very psychedelic at all. Besides Lucy In The Sky and Mr. Kite!, it's definitely a baroque pop album. I have no doubts that Magical Mystery tour is their psychedelic statement, and, in many ways, the album closer to Smile. Strawberry Fields is, to me, closer to Smile than anything on Sgt. Pepper's.

[hypehat]

Personally, I love it when bands go 'look what we can do!' when they can pull it off. And whether it's psychedelic or not is irrelevant to me.

It's hard to put a Beatles album down, but Abbey Road just feels a little bit like Paul McCartney ft. The Beatles at points. Granted, most days Paul is my favourite Beatle (I relate to the 'can write melodies with nothing to say' problem he has), but considering John and George released those amazing solo albums a year later you do wonder what happened to 'The Beatles' at that point.

[SunnyDownSnuff]

I get what you're saying, and I agree that it doesn't matter whether it's psychedelic or not, I just hate it how people point it out as jump starting the psychedelic era, as if other bands had started doing the same thing, and people like Hendrix were already doing real psychedelic rock.

My favorites on Abbey Road (in no order) are a John song (I Want You), a George song (Here Comes The Sun), and a Paul song (You Never Give Me Your Money). I guess I understand what you're saying about it being mostly Paul's statement, but George had two of his strongest songs ever on that album, and so did John (IWY and Come Together). But if you listen to Ram (my favorite Beatle solo album after John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band) you'll see that Paul was still using these definite rock ideas, but translating them to a solo (or duo really) format.
I guess what I'm saying is, I both agree and disagree with you!

[Kurosawa]

Revolver is my favorite, followed by Abbey Road,  and the US Beatles Second Album.

[SufferingFools]

I can't decide what to vote for!


So....

Help! - in the good corner, we have Help, Yesterday, The Night Before, Ticket to Ride, I've Just Seen A Face, I Need You. In the dud corner, we have Yesterday, Another Girl, Act Naturally (I love Ringo but come on), Dizzy Miss Lizzy (although they sound huge - two note guitar riff FTW). It's probably the best they got as the 'rock band' sound for me, and it has a nice vibe.

How did Yesterday get in both corners?