What is the Best Beatles Album

[farlaff]

Jumpin said:

Anyway, that's my initial impression. I'll have to listen to them while high next and get a more informed take.

Lololol

Jumpin said:

OK, I listened to all the Beatles albums from Rubber Soul down to Abbey Road.

1 (tie) The White Album
1 (tie) Abbey Road
3. Sgt. Pepper
4. Rubber Soul
5. Revolver

The White Album is just epic in scale, it reminds me a lot of Rubber Soul, except heavily expanded and with a more playful, edgy, and mature sound to it. I think the song writing on this marks the peak of the Beatles. This one has a TON of my favourite Beatles songs on it, I didn't even realize.

Abbey Road is still at the peak, it is a tighter overall album than the White Album, and is more accessible, I am not really sure it feels all that different from the White Album, just a more crushed down version of it. It has a better ending.

Respect. Like I said, for me anything from "For Sale" until the end of the band could take the spot, since there would be good arguments for any of them (heck, irregular as I think it is, "Help" is amazing and brings "Yesterday" AND "Ticket to Ride" along to boot).

I tend to interpret things not only by my taste and technical quality perception, but also historically. Up to that point, they had been a pop rock band with not as much room for experimentation as they would later have. Then BAM! comes Rubber Soul and along with fantastic tracks it provides a sense of new, anarchic and even rebellious posture with nice messages in between, plus absurdly high quality composition and production values, paving the way for everything that would in their future define the band as "The Beatles", musically. Not the pop culture monsters and beatlemania boys anymore, but gigantic, larger than life musicians, influencers (wut?) and creators. All that, for me, would start here, with this album, which will generally be my pick for best one. And it doesn't hurt that one of their most amazing tunes is also here (In My Life).

Bonus track: I saw one documentary in which George Martin goes to say it is also his favorite album. As the most important member of the band that was not "in" the band (more so than Epstein), I think I'm in good company. :)