144. The Beatles - Abbey Road

Artist: The Beatles
Album: Abbey Road
Year: 1969

And with this album, we've reached the end of the line with The Beatles. We've seen their progression from a decent R&B cover band to a first-rate experimental pop band, one of the most significant, popular, and innovative bands in this history of music. And then we saw them start to fall apart on the sprawling no-holds-barred White Album. Abbey Road represents The Beatles' final attempt to make a cohesive record, and it easily stands as one of their best. A shame they'd only be together for another year before packing it in.

The first half of the album here features some of the band's biggest hits--and tunes from all four Beatles. "Come Together," "Something," and "Here Comes the Sun" all are massive tunes that are among the first songs the average person would think of when considering The Beatles. The usual variety of styles is covered here...eccentric pop, music hall ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer"), blues ("Oh Darling"), hard rock ("She's So Heavy"), and pretty psychedelia ("Because").

The second half is the famous medley, featuring snippets of half-baked Beatle tunes that are deftly sewn together into a kaleidoscopic song cycle. I'd imagine some of these could have been White Album outtakes or song sketches that never would have seen the light of day otherwise, but it works well here in the sense that all the little pieces kind of flow together to create something that's greater than the sum of its parts.

So let's recap The Beatles on the whole...

With The Beatles: a good intro to the band, a charming album with some hints at the songwriting prowess of Lennon/McCartney

A Hard Day's Night: first album of all originals. Good, but I actually preferred With The Beatles to this one.

Rubber Soul: just a perfect album from start to finish. Fantastic songwriting, songwriting subject matter starts to mature beyond love songs, music begins to incorporate influences from Dylan, Indian music, and Western classical. Song-by-song I feel Rubber Soul is the band's best album.

Revolver: A transition to psychedelia. Some fantastic tunes. Some filler, in my opinion. Not as consistently enthralling as Rubber Soul and not as transcendent. Not entirely worth its super-high praise (a lot of folks call this the band's best album) but still completely indispensable.

Sgt. Pepper's: Totally brilliant, fantastically conceived. The songs go together so well, fit together so perfectly. A wide variety of styles. Perhaps the quintessential Beatles album. And yet, taking the songs individually outside the context of the album, I don't feel they stand up as well.

White Album: Remarkable to see how the band branched out from being a standard little pop band to being capable of an album spanning across just about every genre and pulling off everything at least somewhat convincingly within five short years. There's some filler on this album (as there is on just about every double album) but there's so many great songs here.

Abbey Road: The last attempt at a masterpiece, and it succeeds in just about every way. Shows off all the good things about The Beatles' songwriting, and even has a surprise in store at the end. Timeless.

Rating: Indispensable