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In my opinion:

Most overrated: "The Beatles (White Album)" (although Sgt. Pepper and Revolver come close)
Most underrated: "Magical Mystery Tour"

Easy
Abbey Road is over rated. Duller than the early stuff, a little too clean. Good but not perfect.

Beatles For Sale and or Help or very under rated. Rubber Soul couldn't have happened without their growth and the music is good.

Most Overrated: Abbey Road
Most Underrated: Please Please Me

Most overrated: Sgt. Pepper.
I just don't care much for this album. It's good, but...the best album of all time? I strongly disagree.

Most underrated: Help/Beatles For Sale
Largely ignored. What You're Doing is one of my favorites.


I'm surprised at lack of love for Abbey Road. The medley on the second side still blows me away every time!

I find it hard to choose an "overrated" album. Most of their albums deserve the praise... maybe Sgt. Pepper's is overrated... maybe

Underrated album: Magical Mystery Tour

Overrated: Sgt. Pepper

Underrated: Beatles for Sale

With all the people nowadays naming Pepper as way over-rated, I'm starting to think that it has become their most under-rated.

Although, to be fair, 'Rubber Soul' has always striked me as a bit weak when compared to what came next. 'Think To Yourself', 'What Goes On', 'Run For Your Life' and 'Wait' are mediocre songs at best to me.

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Me too! It is absolutely incredible.

I can't call any of their albums overrated although I think Let it Be is by far their worst album. I love Abbey Road personally. I think MMT US version is ace and it doesn't get nearly enough love.

Exactly like Dumb Angel:

Overrated: Sgt. Pepper
Underrated: Beatles For Sale and Let It Be

Maybe Sgt. Pepper is both underrated and overrated at the same time. Aside from Pepper, I'd say The White Album, even though I really love that album.

Over: White Album

Under: With The Beatles.

Most Underrated: Magical Mystery Tour

Most Overrated: Let It Be

Most overrated: Rubber Soul - I love The Beatles but I never heard the greatness in this album like others do...

Most underrated: Let It Be - flawed but enjoyable, even the flaws...

The White Album (a good one record  two record set) overrated
Magical Mystery Tour underrated

I like all of the White Album...except Revolution #9. I just don't get it.

Over rated: Abbey Road
Under rated: Hard to say, maybe Help!

Overrated is easily Sgt. Pepper

Underrated: Rubber Soul

I say Sgt Pepper because it is truly a great case study in production and what could be accomplished in the studio. But when you take away the smoke and mirrors (I'm using this term lightly because I do love the album) the songwriting, IMO, is just not top notch and not truly representative of what they were capable of doing.

Rubber Soul, I mean...come on. The whole album - track by track are just all great examples of terrific songwriting through and through.

Rubber Soul is one of my top 1 or 2 favorite Beatle albums, but I don't find that it doesn't get the respect it deserves. I consider it to be "properly rated." It does get a lot of respect, after all, at least by most critics.

Yeah I was hard pressed to think of a Beatles album that is underrated... I feel that Beatles and underrated really just don't go together. That and Magical Mystery Tour was too easy an answer. I think I chose Rubber Soul because in my social circle it gets hated on quite a bit.

I thought it was the cat's meow when I was 16, but tend to avoid it these days  :old

Overrated: Abbey Road.  One of the best albums ever.
Underrated: Beatles for Sale.  What a load of sh*t.

For me, Rubber Soul started a four year streak of unbeatable albums. With the exception of A Hard Day's Night, most of the albums before that weren't so great, with lots of covers and general filler, but at least they didn't ever release anything like "Denny's Drums."

I can't say anything by The Beatles is underrated or overrated. I think they are the best band in history, and almost everything they did is evaluated accurately, though some of the early albums are indeed unnecessarily praised.

However, unlike most I think Rubber Soul is a better, more affecting album than Revolver, if only because of "Nowhere Man, "In My Life," and its much more cohesive and organic sound.

Based on what I heard from people before I actually got to hear the album...

(http://www.beatlesbible.com/wp/media/white_album.jpg)

The White Album was easily the most over-rated.  I saw why people liked Pepper, Revolver, Rubber Soul and Abbey Road -- but The White Album, I was surprised.  It was pretty rough and sloppy.  To me, it seemed to be a classic case of "just because it was the Beatles."  So people thought it was brilliant.  I liked the album, but I would have liked it if it was done by some no-name Indie band.  I felt, that your average Beatles fan wouldn't have even given it a glance if it didn't have "The Beatles" on it.  So that's my vote.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/TheBeatlesMagicalMysteryTouralbumcover.jpg)

The most under-rated has to be Magical Mystery Tour.  As I dove into the Beatles music, Pepper had all the hype.  And whether it lived up to all that hype, I've gone back and forth on over the years -- but I heard nothing about MMT.  And when I threw it on for the first time... I was amazed.  It was everything to me that people said Pepper was to them.  It seemed like a lost discovery.  All these great, great songs.  And they all worked together without any pretension.  So Mystery Tour is the winner of this honor.


(http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/104/9/b/The_Beatles_Albums_by_BeatlesMania6.jpg)

I was quite surprised by the pre-Rubber Soul albums too, since they didn't seem to get much "hype."  Even with the filler and "quaint" songs -- I was impressed by how good they were.  Really, how good all their albums were.  The MONO Box allowed me to really listen to all their albums (well, most of them!) end-to-end with a fresh perspective... and I have to say, they had quite a run.  Really, no stinker in the bunch.  That's pretty damn impressive.

While the kid in me was on-board, the adult in me does have to say, that in general, the Beatles are candidates for the most over-hyped band in general.  (Yes, this argument again.)  Not by virtue of their wide-spread success, that they deserved -- but by virtue of their press.  I always felt they were the first band to be so actively marketed -- propagandized -- to young minds.  So that, right there, turned me off.  To my generation, which followed the boomers, we always heard that this group was so damn important.

I got it.  They're IMPORTANT.

Well, ok, but they didn't cure cancer or put an end to hunger.  They made Brady Bunch songs and appeared on lunch boxes wearing Captain Kangaroo outfits.  One guy was named Ringoooo.  Anyway, none of them were Elvis Presley, let's be clear about that.  There just seemed to be a lot seriousness and pretension that surrounded the band (and its fans).  And all of it seemed to be at odds with the bands aesthetic (still to this day - serious black and white).  It actually overshadowed the band.  It's unfortunate, because they really were excellent.  They didn't need the hype.  

Underrated: everything before Rubber Soul

Overrated: everything after Rubber Soul

This.

A Hard Day's Night is the most consistent and best Beatles album.

Overrated: Sgt. Pepper

Underrated: With the Beatles

Hard Days Night and HELP are my faves :)

There is not one weak track on Hard Days Night. Even the US version was pretty good - I actually enjoyed hearing the instrumental "Ringo's Theme", it was such a nice moment in the film. Capitol really messed up the US Help! soundtrack, though, far too much goofy Indian music - although oddly prophetic, considering how obsessed with that George would soon be.

Overrated: The White Album - Could have been a great single album.  Also, I think the Beatles are a band that sound better with a complex production, so the back-to-basics aspect only works on certain tracks.

Underrated: Please Please Me and Magical Mystery Tour - In the former, a great early start that IMO completely outclasses With the Beatles, and in the latter a continuation of Sgt Pepper's and, despite a couple less interesting, every bit as exciting a listen.

People keep saying the white album should have been a single LP, but I've never seen a suggested single LP tracklist for it that looks any good. Maybe it should have been a three sided album.

MMT is generally not regarded as a bona fide album rather than being undervalued. It was a double EP in the UK and was not constructed as a coherent album just the EP plus other stuff recordedd around that time. It is brilliant though.

Overrated: Sgt. Pepper----good, but the best ever??
Underrated: Please Please Me----a debut that puts most bands' best albums to shame... 

Overrated, The Beatles - Half great, half so-so.

Underrated, With The Beatles - Only because I read about negatives that I just don't see or hear there.

This is a rough lineup I would love on a single LP.  Heavier, bluesier first half and a softer, melodic second half.  There are more tracks than this that I like on the White Album, but I don't feel I need them all in one place.

Back in the USSR
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness is a Warm Gun
Birthday
Helter Skelter

Honey Pie
Martha My Dear
Sexy Sadie
Blackbird
Rocky Raccoon
I Will
Mother Nature's Son

Add Savoy Truffle and Cry Baby Cry and it works great for me.

Overrated: Sgt Pepper

Underrated: Magical Mystery Tour, with Yellow Submarine a close second. Although George's I Need You and John's It's Only Love from "Help!" don't get NEARLY as much love as they should.

I'm not sure about Yellow Submarine. The original songs that appeared are up to the usual high standard of the Beatles. But they shouldn't have put "Yellow Submarine" as it was already on Revolver, and "All You Need Is Love" which was already on Magical Mystery Tour. Plus the decision to put George Martin's songs on the second half of the album is unforgivable, and destroyed the album.
IMHO, their second-worst album.

Most overrated: White Album
I really like a lot of the songs on this, but really, for the praise it gets, it just doesn't follow through from start to finish.

Most underrated: A Hard Day's Night
Such a fantastic album from start to finish. It gets lost in the Rubber Soul/Revolver/Sgt. Pepper/White Album/Abbey Road conglomerate.

+1

Overrated: White Album, Underrated: Please Please Me, With the Beatles, Meet the Beatles, Beatles 2nd Album, Beatles 65...

Overrated: every single one
Underrated: Not a single one

Overrated: Sgt Pepper. If a bunch of people are saying over now, it's only because for DECADES it was held up by nostalgic boomers as the end all be all gold standard for absolutely no reason except "it was SO popular when it came out, tho!" There's so many better albums from both the Beatles and 1967 alone, so say nothing of all the other albums ever released in history.

Underrated: A Hard Day's Night. Everyone talks about Rubber Soul and what came after. I bet you 80-99% of Beatle fans, if you asked them their favorite, it'd be one of the five from RS/Rev/Pepper/WA/AR. Comparatively few ever listen to or talk about the pre-65 stuff. But Hard Day's Night is fantastic and just as good as anything that came after. Unfortunately, it was followed by the comparatively mediocre Beatles for Sale and Help! so it's sorta lost in an ocean of their "lesser early years" material. But that album is so freaking good it's by far my favorite of any band from before the '65 production race boom.