2025 already.
We’re starting the year doing something so many people seem to do but always get wrong. We’re taking all the studio albums by The Beatles and ranking them, best to worst, or rather worst to best.
You can yawn if you want, but so many folk do it and so why not us?
A few rules. Only UK studio albums, no live recordings. No compilations. No foreign versions. Only 12″ vinyl records. Nothing issued much after they broke up (really) like re-mixes or anthology projects or collections (but we accept Let It Be). No solo stuff. No early works from Germany. No bootlegs.
Just the 11 core albums, issued on Parlophone or Apple which are:
- Please Please Me
- With The Beatles
- A Hard Day’s Night
- Beatles For Sale
- Help!
- Rubber Soul
- Revolver
- Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- The Beatles
- Abbey Road
- Let It Be
No Magical Mystery Tour as that was not issued as a 12″ in the UK at the time. We wondered about Yellow Submarine, not the songtrack but the original. More than half of that is not Beatles, and, of the six Beatles’ tracks, two had been issued before. So we have ignored it.
We’re using our original mono (except the last two) pressings, no supervinyl or remixes or anything modern and different, no digital or streaming. These are the albums as they came out, things we bought at the time and still have and still play.
You can vote for best or worst.
As for the rest, well, if you disagree you can tell us…