What's the best Beatles album

Magical Mystery Tour > Sgt Pepper

history will be kind to magical mystery tour imo

one by one over time, every beatles album will have its turn to be the popular pick for 'best beatles album'. my money's on a 'beatles for sale' revival circa 2015

Beatles for Sale is the best Beatles album! The second side is soooooo great.

Bit too many cover versions on that one for it to be a contender, but the originals are strong enough.

history will be kind to magical mystery tour imo

Trouble about MMT is that it is kind of revisionist. We who belong to younger generations know it through the American version, which also included three brilliant double A-side singles. However, it was originally released as an EP without five of those six songs. It obviously isn't quite as strong without "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane", "All You Need Is Love" and "Hello Goodbye", even if "I Am The Walrus" is in there anyways.

A Double-EP, of all things!

With the Beatles is such an exciting album. It's still quite raw sounding, but the songs were really coming together. I know it has some low points, esp. near the end of side 2, but the first 3 tracks are mindblowing, what better bookends could you have than It Won't Be Long and Money?, They actually improve on Smokey's You Really Got a Hold On Me, and Lennon's voice never sounded better than this. It deserves some votes.
Also I'd like to put a word in for Hard Day's Night. The first side is almost perfect, were it not for Tell Me Why.

I love "Devil in Her Heart".

please please me ftw. everything after that album it's like "yup mhm we're doing this" but on ppm it's like "WOO-HOO LET'S PLAY SOME FUCKING ROCK AND ROLL!" it also gets props for containing the best (early) beatles song ever: "there is a place."

My vote goes to Help. But the best Beatles record would be a compilation of the best songs from Help, Rubber Soul and Revolver.

I know it has some low points, esp. near the end of side 2, but the first 3 tracks are mindblowing, what better bookends could you have than It Won't Be Long and Money?

A lot. "It Won't Be Long" is OK, but "Money" was pointless. If they didn't have enough original material to fill an album, they might as well have waited until they did.

I also feel that the original songs on "With The Beatles" (except for a handful, such as "All My Loving" obv.) aren't quite as good as their other output from that period. And "With The Beatles" is among my least favourites Beatles albums. Either that one or "Let It Be" is their weakest as long as you don't count "Yellow Submarine" as an album.

yo don't be knockin' let it be! that album gets way more than its fair share of hate, and is wonderful. agree about wtb's general shittiness and the fact that money is horrible though. must've been a huge let down at the time after such a mindblowing debut.

Mmm, don't remember it being taken as such, no.

If they didn't have enough original material to fill an album, they might as well have waited until they did.

Come on, Geir, you know as well as I that it wasn't up to "they".

Check this work rate!

Please Please Me
(8 months)
With the Beatles
(8 months)
A Hard Day's Night
(5 months)
Beatles For Sale
(8 months)
Help !
(4 months)
Rubber Soul
(8 months)
Revolver
(4 months)
A Collection of Beatles Oldies
(6 months)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
(17 months)
Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album)
(2 months)
Yellow Submarine
(8 months)
Abbey Road
(8 months)
Let it Be

Mmm, don't remember it being taken as such, no.

yeah silly me i just realized that this is the early 60s we're talking about where basically all albums were shit and people only cared about singles. and the singles from with the beatles are just fine.

There were no UK singles from "With The Beatles" actually.

And, yes, you are right, but their next album, "A Hard Day's Night", was still a marvellous album, crowded with ace self-penned songs, and still one of my favourite albums by them of all time. It's not like people cared a lot about albums in 1964 either, but "A Hard Day's Night" was still the first ever perfect album in the "rock" genre.

yup yup good album, i think what makes it so solid is the fact that it's almost entirely lennon penned tunes. that man could not write a sub par pop song if you asked him nicely.

Not back then. But then, McCartney filled him out with gems like "And I Love Her" and "Thinks We Said Today".

"Things..." even.

I think I missed this poll at the time. Genuinely astounded at the placing of Abbey Road! Closest thing IMO to a dud Beatles record and I thought I was not particularly alone in that feeling...?

Oddly I've met a fair few people who rate Abbey Road as their favourite - it's not mine by a long shot though. It'd probably rank mid-table for me I think.

"Abbey Road" is usually up there with the best ones in all those surveys. Rarely their best, but usually ranked among their 4-5 best.

Having it on top is typically ILM-contrarian obv.

nothing contrarian about it! it's a great album. not my fave, but I look at the tracklist and I'm not sure if there's a single song I dislike
3.1 Side one
"Come Together"
"Something"
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"
"Oh! Darling"
"Octopus's Garden"
"I Want You (She's So Heavy)"
Side two
"Here Comes the Sun"
"Because"
The medley
"Her Majesty"
Yeah, yeah, I know, "Maxwell's" -- but I loved that song when I was 8, so ... Same goes for "Octopus".

OK, I like every one of those tracks except the Medley. But in my memory the medley is like 40 minutes long and sounds like something a band claiming to be "the reformed Beatles" might release in 1974.

Side Two Medley? Side Two Dudley more like AMIRITE?

The medley is nice enough. "Abbey Road" is a great album although personally I don't like "Come Together" at all, and I am no big fan of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" either. "Because" is beautiful though, so Lennon was still able to come up with the occasional gem even then.

I like the medley, in fact the whole of side two is great - side one just has that Silver Hammer/Oh Darling/Octopus run that spoils it for me. Come Together is just 'ok'.

The medley is the buhhh-homb! Esp. if you start it (as I always do, in my mind) with "Because." So, yeah, basically, side two. Side one is just OK, any given side of any of their previous albums from "Rubber Soul" on devours it, more or less.

A lot. "It Won't Be Long" is OK, but "Money" was pointless. If they didn't have enough original material to fill an album, they might as well have waited until they did.

being that they are basically the ones that invented this concept (w/r/t rock music at least), it seems really bizarre to fault them for...not doing it earlier?

A Hard Day's Night, I think, is just about flawless. I'll pit it against anything from '66 and later.

I'm going to come and defend "Come Together" because of the inspired performance from all members which manages to be the smoothest, most stone cool thing ever with a supremely minimal arrangement. It's so entirely unlike anything else the Beatles ever did but it's also perfect; it's another of those windows into another dimension, like "Helter Skelter", where this group that started off playing "Love Me Do" was so tight as a group they could veer off into totally unforeseen genres and master them, often decades before their acceptance into the mainstream.

"I Want You" wins for a number of reasons, including the Santana-esque jazz instrumental section, the incredible incredible incredible organ-bass-scream breaks before the "She's so heavy"s, and the white noise buildup at the end. Amazing. Jawdropping. But if your idea of Beatles is limited to melodic songs then I can see how you will disagree cos there is not much song here but the PERFORMANCE (like "Come Together") is remarkable. Recently I read Geoff Emerick's "Here There & Everywhere" and he recalled George and John being so excited by the white noise ending and Paul absolutely hating it. At least he had the good sense not to turn "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" into another "Obla Di Obla Da".

Yeah, "I Want You" is my favorite track on that record for sure.

A lot. "It Won't Be Long" is OK, but "Money" was pointless.

jesus christ you are so full of shit.

'money' is not only the best version of that song but the beatles' best cover, period. it's probably among the dozen or so best rock'n'roll performances of that decade.

abbey road is the most overrated one.

best one probably a tie between a hard day's night and rubber soul.

two votes for SPLHCB? Whoah

On the plus side I'm really glad MMT got some love. I for one really like the movie, and "Flying" and "Blue Jay Way" have been in my Beatles top 10 for years.

Every moment of Abbey Road is sublime, aside from Maxwell's and Octopus'.