Introduction
After such a good response from the revolver review, I thought why not look at another classic Beatles album. Although it doesn’t break the top 3 in my list, Revolver, Abbey Road and Sgt. Peppers taking those spots respectively, this alum would probably be fourth. Actually my top one would be ‘The best of The Beatles’ (Alan Partridge joke).Also I was listening to this album the other day in the car on the way to Weston-Super-Mare, and I forgot how much I adore this album.
This was the sixth album The Beatles completed and was released in the December of 1965, The Beatles had to record this album just over four weeks so it would make the Christmas market, normally this would affect a band because of the limited time, but these aren’t just any band.
The album was produced by none other than George Martin who famously produced all The Beatles albums alone, except for their final album(shouldn’t have been) where Phil Spector produced it with him and George Martin wasn’t credited for it. This album got a 42 week run in the charts, which isn’t bad really and it also took The Beatles previous album ‘Help’ off the top of the charts on Christmas day.
The Album
The album features songs like ‘Norwegian wood’, ‘Nowhere Man’, ‘Drive My Car’ and probably my favorite on the album ‘In my Life’. George’s own songs also featured on the album, proving once again that he wasn’t just a character to stand behind John and Paul, his songs were ‘Think for yourself’ and ‘If i needed someone’, which I’m quite fond of myself.
Before this The Beatles were known to sing love songs, and this album turned that around slightly with songs like ‘Girl’ which is about a girl that is particularly very nice…bitch, ‘Norwegian Wood’ which is supposed to have been about John Lennon and the affairs he had while he was with Cynthia, sure I read that somewhere, and finally ‘Run for your life’ where he’s basically saying if I catch you with another man, you’re dead, I’m gonna get you so run off, quite a catchy tune.
This album was sort of a foot in the door to do something slightly different which they hadn’t done before, for instance George used a Sitar for one of the parts in Norwegian Wood, I’m sure I watched something where they said he wasn’t to good at playing at the time so he was just playing the basics. So it was a step in that direction, a set up for ‘Revolver’ if you’d imagine.
In My Life
I think this is one of my favorite Beatles songs of all time, along with ‘across the universe’, ‘a day in the life’ and ‘I’m only Sleeping’ (All Lennon Songs). Apparently it started out as a poem, and then he sort of turned into a song which you can kind of tell when you just look at the lyrics. It doesn’t really have a song structure (except for having a chorus) because none of it really rhymes or looks like it could be sung together.
This is easily one of John’s best songs and vocal performances I believe, especially with that note at the end. The number of times I’ve attempted to sing that part and it hasn’t worked is countless. Lennon claimed this song as his own but Paul said it was an equal collaboration, but I’d like to think that it was personal John and it was his own work.
Overall 9.0
I can’t stress more that it’s a brilliant piece of work and easily one of the best Beatles albums and probably one of the best albums full stop full stop, because it’s still fresh, it’s still new, and it’s still relevant and I’m sure that this record is still influencing people now. So i’d like to say thank you to them for gifting this album to us :), comment and tell me what you think.
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