The Beatles Review Saga
(in progress)

subtitle pending

October 9, 2024 - Present


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 one of my art history classes. (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.

Some other disclaimers I feel are worth mentioning:

  1. I have zero nostalgia for the Beatles. The only song I heard of theirs regularly growing up is Yellow Submarine, and that’s just because it was on the radio station my mom played while driving me to elementary school.
  2. Outside of what I happen to know by chance, (which is very little) I am deliberately ignoring cultural context for these reviews. I did this for Taylor Swift and I’m doing it for these guys too.
  3. This is purely my opinion, and my opinion is not the end-all, be-all stance of my entire generation. The Taylor Swift reviews should make that abundantly clear; I am a notorious Midnights hater.

If it sounds like I’m preemptively addressing “boomers” with these, that’s because I kind of am. I know some of my family reads my blog, (Hi Gram, love you!) and while they are far from stereotypical boomers, I have to imagine that at least a few of their Facebook friends are. So since this is a band from the 60s with a wildly different demographic from Swift, and since we’re in the midst of a sort of “ageism culture war”, I think it's worth mentioning some things.

Perhaps I’m strawmanning the baby boomers a bit here, but I find that the traditionalism that many of them tend to have runs rampant in a lot of discussions surrounding music. Anytime I hear someone complain that new music is bad and old music is good, I will always be reminded of the fact that, when jazz got really popular in the 1920’s, there was a large group of people that hated it because they viewed it as an attack on “traditional values”, and went back to listening to classical pieces. (There was also probably some racism sprinkled in there with jazz’s African roots, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I think it’s relatively uncontroversial to say that this line of thinking doesn’t do anyone any good. There are plenty of studies that show the music you listen to during your developmental teenage years is massively influential on your taste, and so of course people are going to think the music they grew up with is better than everything else. Plus, just because something is different doesn’t mean it’s bad; challenging the status quo is like the whole point of art.

All of this is to say that, as someone born after the year 2000 and as someone without a vested interest in even contemporary popular culture, I feel like I’m in a position to offer a unique perspective on the Beatles that I haven’t seen before, and I’m personally interested in whether their music holds up half a century later. I hope you’ll keep this in mind.

Also, 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.

With The Beatles

To me, this is more of the same as the last album, just with slightly better recording quality. If you’re into this style, you’ll probably love it; as for me, I’ll just pick out my favorites and playlist them away for when I’m in the mood for some classic rock. (which is rarely ever.)

I have faith that once we get to album names I actually recognize, like Sgt. Peppers and beyond, they’ll be able to shake things up a bit, but right now, I’m worried about the next five or so albums. I like some of the individual chord choices, but the similar twelve-bar-blues structures are starting to wear me down.

Also, I know the drum parts her don’t quite fit, but the recording of this drum set sounds like it’s prime breakcore resampling material. I wonder if anyone’s done that…

To Be Continued…

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