It’s not as remarkable as it seems that The Beatles continue to top ‘best band of all time’ polls over 60 years since they first burst on to the scene. Not only were they the first real rock band, they also set the tone for what came afterwards, moving from blinding rock n roll songs to astonishingly inventive, innovative music that changed the face of not just pop music but western culture. And it’s not just that many of the tropes of rock and pop were invented by the Fab Four, it’s that the songs and albums more than stand the test of time – and are still being sung by teens today. Put simply, they top the polls because they are the best band of all time – and it’s starting to look like they always will be.
Ranking the work of great artists is always a fool’s errand – everyone will disagree somewhere, often vociferously – so let me be clear that this is my very personal ranking of their studio albums from weakest to greatest. And let me also be clear that if I do this again next week, the order will probably change.
12. Yellow Submarine. It’s debatable that this should be included at all – the soundtrack to the animated film of the same name was viewed by the band as a contractual obligation released between two absolute classics: The Beatles (aka the White Album) and Abbey Road. Side two is not even the band: it’s George’s Martin’s score from the movie – and the album contains only four new Beatles songs, alongside the previously released title track and All You Need Is Love. It’s an easy enough listen – All You Need Is Love is obviously a classic and Hey Bulldog and Only A Northern Song are decent – even the orchestral score is nice. But it’s hard to count it as a proper Beatles album.
11. Beatles For Sale. Their fourth album is typical of the early mix of originals and covers, perhaps a bit more downbeat than the albums that preceded it. At the time it continued their emerging legend and has some truly great moments. including Eight Days A Week, their belting cover of Rock and Roll Music and sombre Lennon tunes I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party and I’m A Loser. It’s only as low as #11 because they did greater albums.
10. With The Beatles. Different times: the Beatles’ second album came out in the same year as their first and finds the new sensations fresh, raucus and lively. Standouts include All My Loving, It Won’t Be Long and some of their best early covers: Please Mr Postman, Money (That’s What I Want) and Roll Over Beethoven. The first two Beatles albums feel like a live set put on to vinyl: you get a genuine sense of how thrilling and astonishing it must have been to see them on stage.
9. Let It Be. Released after the split but recorded before Abbey Road, this album was a notoriously difficult one to make, with tensions between the group running high. The production tweaks from Phil Spector infuriated McCartney and were cited in the band’s break-up. Nonetheless, there are some stone cold classics here and much to love: the brilliant title track is maybe the ultimate McCartney standard and how can you not love a collection that includes Across The Universe, Get Back and The Long And Winding Road, not to mention less celebrated tunes like Two Of Us, I’ve Got A Feeling and Dig A Pony. Maybe not as coherent as some of their albums, but a great listen – and I’d argue McCartney’s rearranged version, Let It Be …Naked is even better.
8. Please Please Me. One-two-three-FOUR! What an intro, what a sound, what a time to be alive. Those of us who recall the sensation of punk when it first emerged have nothing on those who were there when rock n roll bands really became a thing. This album bounces of the walls even today: goodness knows what people made of it at the time; I guess the sensation was similar to first hearing Elvis, but this time with a whole band that played and wrote their own songs, had a distinctive look and sound – one might almost call it a brand – and seemed to change pop culture at the drop of a hat. It is hard to cite this as just a great debut album; it’s the debut of a whole movement that would change western society forever. To open with I Saw Her Standing There and end with a rampaging Twist and Shout – with a fabulous mix of originals and covers in between – it’s just blistering. The title track, their cover of Chains and Do You Want To Know A Secret? also stand out, but being there at the time must have been astonishing.
7. Help! Their fifth album finds them fully in their stride and contains some of their very finest tunes: Yesterday, Ticket To Ride, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, The Night Before, I’ve Just Seen A Face and Help! itself, a classic which has occasionally made my Desert Island discs. Also written as a soundtrack to the movie of the same name, it’s just a rollicking good collection of tunes – and of course the title track reflects Lennon’s bewilderment and panic in the midst of Beatlemania.
6. The Beatles. Also known as the White Album. Ok, I can sense a few diehards parting company with me here and there is definitely a case for this being higher,as it contains many works of genius. It would be higher if they’d been a bit more strict with the songs they included: there are maybe five or six fillers that aren’t needed and Revolution 9 is the sort of thing that could have been sneaked out as a joke on some rare b-side. Don’t get me wrong, I love the album, but some quality control could have put it in the top 2 or 3. Standouts for me are the divine Blackbird, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Sexy Sadie, Julia, Back In The USSR, Helter Skelter, Mother Nature’s Son, Glass Onion…I could probably go on. They’d emerged by now as an entirely different proposition but an equally explosive and influential one.
5. A Hard Day’s Night. This is a near perfect early Beatles album and I wanted to get one from the early years in the top 5. It’s also the soundtrack to a film and it’s the first album with songs written entirely by the band, with George emerging as a formidable writer alongside Lennon and McCartney. Another astonishing opening – that opening chord to the title track – and just so much to love alongside it – Can’t Buy Me Love, I Should Have Known Better, If I Fell, And I Love Her – and arguably their most sophisticated track to date, Things We Said Today. (We had that at my wedding, doncha know?)
4. Abbey Road. It kind of becomes impossible at this stage of ranking as nearly everything is brilliant. This one maybe loses a tiny bit of ground due to the silliness of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Octopus’s Garden but there is a case for the medley on side 2 that starts with You Never Give Me Your Money and ends with, well, The End, being the finest moment in their recording history. Also includes my favourite Beatles song, Something and another Harrison classic, Here Comes The Sun along with the seminal Come Together. And THAT iconic album cover.
3. Rubber Soul. This was my favourite Beatles album for a long time: it’s an outstanding collection of songs that hangs together so coherently that Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys thought it had raised the bar of what an album could be – almost inventing the concept of an album as a piece of art in itself and reducing the focus on singles. It’s a another huge leap forward in the band’s development and ability to lead the way by some distance. Again, lots of standouts: Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, In My Life, Girl, Drive My Car, Michelle. Also includes Harrison’s spectacularly underrated and underplayed If I Needed Someone and one of my favourite Ringo singalongs, What Goes On? The first Beatles album I listened to properly and the first one I loved.
2. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Like the Beatles topping best band polls, there are good reasons why this is often voted the greatest album. In truth its ubiquity in the polls often sees it marked down in lists like this and it’s been as low as #5 in my previous rankings, but you just can’t get away from the fact that this a massive moment in pop music and popular culture: it’s the moment rock n roll became something else entirely. Way beyond the ‘silly love songs’ McCartney would later celebrate in another great pop song, this feels like the start of art rock as a mainstream thing. The creativity and invention in the production is staggering – A Day In The Life is many people’s favourite Beatles tune and it’s hard to see the antecedents for such a song. She’s Leaving Home is sad and beautiful, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds is maybe the trippiest tune the world had heard at that point. The title track and the way it segues into With A Little Help From My Friends – ok, Ringo surpasses What Goes On? here – plus dreamy village green vignettes like Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite and Fixing A Hole – even the music hall throwback, When I’m 64 – it’s just one good song after another. Above all. it’s a leap of creativity and innovation that probably no-one saw coming.
1.Revolver. Best of the best – and when you look at the list it tops, that’s no mean achievement. If there are really three distinct phases of The Beatles – the raw n raunchy rock/pop love songs, the trippy hippy invention and the mid-period that joins the two, my top 3 suggests the mid-period is my favourite of all. I recognise others will take a different view. This is a perfect album and probably the one you’d use to introduce the Fab Four to someone who had been hiding under a rock all their lives. It’s probably also the template for the Britpop rockers of the 90s. Tomorrow Never Knows just comes from another dimension, the first time any artist had played music backwards in the studio for effect – unquestionably a song that changed music and maybe a clue to the invention to come on Sgt Pepper. The whole album is studded with timeless classics , hanging together much as Rubber Soul had – this concept of the rock album now fully in its stride. Hard to leave out anything – though Yellow Submarine is not everyone’s favourite, it works well here – but absolute standouts include Eleanor Rigby, Here There And Everywhere, For No-one, And Your Bird Can Sing, Got To Get You Into My Life, I’m Only Sleeping, I Want To Tell You – but I am still leaving out songs that are among their greatest. An absolute masterpiece.
So there we have it. We will never agree this order – I am not sure I even agree with myself now I’ve written it. But let’s agree this: The Beatles were a phenomenon that probably won’t be surpassed in popular music. We rightly celebrate them alongside the very greatest artists in any genre.
Rory writes 