---

At some point I’ll get a table of contents set up so you can jump directly to certain albums. For now, you’ll just have to scroll. Sorry!

---

It's finally time. In case you haven’t read it, I’ll restate what I said in my update blog.

Much like with Swift, I’ve never intently listened to the Beatles; I’ve only ever heard them on the radio or playing in the store or whatever. Unlike Swift, though—whom I had no opinions on going in— I’ve gone on record in the past saying I think the Beatles are overhyped. While I still stand by that to some degree, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to state that without having heard much of their music.

Additionally, while I don’t know much about the Beatles themselves, I actually know quite a lot about Yoko Ono; in fact, I wrote a research paper about her works for my feminist art history class. (I’m pretty proud of it honestly, I may post it here at some point.) So, long story short, I think I’ll have some interesting thoughts about their work.

This time around, I’m ditching the X/10 number scores. That system doesn’t have enough nuance to fully explain how I feel about a body of work, especially for these review sagas. Most of the songs are simply just not for me, and I feel bad giving things like a 2/10 simply because I don’t like the style. Maybe I’ll find a scoring method that works for me eventually, but for now, we’re leaving those out.

I may edit or add to the preamble here as I go, but for now, just know that I simply just forgot what else I was going to write here. Oops.

Anyways, let’s get down to business.

Please Please Me

First thing’s first, I have to be honest: Normally I listen to these on my airpods, but for this album and any other one that’s going to have drums hard-panned to one ear, I’m listening on my phone speakers. In my defense, the iPhone probably has better speakers than whatever people listened to this on in 19-sixty-whatever. Plus they didn't use headphones that much back then anyways, so this is probably a more authentic experience.

I don’t listen to a lot of music from this time period, so I don't have a good point of reference to compare it to, and since this is only their first album, it doesn't seem like they’ve done anything truly innovative yet that would’ve given them the current legendary status they hold today. As I go through the albums, I’ll be able to follow them through their artistic journey and compare each release, but for now, I’m just like “this sure is some ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll I don't usually listen to.” It is interesting to hear the kind of trends that were popular in music around this time though.

• Notable Likes

  • I Saw Her Standing There
    My immediate reaction to this opener was hearing the influence the drum pattern likely had on one of my favorite songs: Broken Man by Fox Stevenson. Something tells me this won’t be the last time this happens.
  • Chains
    Definitely prefer the blusier ones, the guy on harmonica knows what’s up. (Although it’s kinda loud sometimes, maybe a weird remaster thing.)
  • For The Honey
    I’ll always appreciate songs that clearly were just made for fun rather than to be a hit.
  • Twist and Shout
    This probably isn’t true, but I like to imagine that back then this had the same cultural presence that WAP does today, “kids these days only like sex and drugs and rock and roll,” etc.

• Notable Dislikes

  • Boys
    Unrelated, but the spelling of “mbop bop shuop” in the spotify lyrics gives me the ick. (It’s “shoo-wop”, for the record.)
  • Love Me Do
    I feel like I should enjoy this one but I just don’t. They went so far on the catchiness scale that it looped back around to being annoying.
  • Baby It's You
    Whoever is singing the shalala’s sounds so bored.
  • Do You Want To Know A Secret
    I’m grateful most of the songs on here are only like two minutes long because of how vinyl records work. I’d probably dislike this album more otherwise.

To Be Continued…

Back to Top