for me it has always been very hit or miss, if the sounded like that their whole time as a band then i dont think i would have ever liked them, but because of how Amazing everything after those first few are, then i can appreciate the older stuff, just dont listen to it much.

Help! is actually quite good...but yeah, the further you go into the past before it the worse the playing is and the lyrics can be kinda stuck in their era.

White Album
Abbey Road
Revolver
Let It Be
Rubber Soul
Sgt Peppers
Magical Mystery Tour

White Album
Rubber Soul
Let It Be
Magical Mystery Tour
Abbey Road
Revolver
Sgt Pepper's
Help!
Beatles For Sale

I love every one of them. You're right that the playing can be ramshackle at times (though virtuoso musicianship was never really their thing), but melodically and harmonically I still think the best of it is about as good as pure pop gets. Check the "Live at the BBC" album for a great document of the Fabs in their moptop days.

The Beatles are one of the few bands I don't really think about in terms of albums. To me it's just one large continuum of work that can be arranged and rearranged in countless combinations and still sound totally right. (At the end of the day that's more or less how I feel about Pearl Jam too.)

I'm with you on this. I attempted to rank the albums, but I couldn't properly do it. There's something about each era that grabs me differently and yet, it all sounds good playing together.

I really enjoy Help!

I like them before Help!, some of them a lot...but to me there's a definite line. In fact when I was getting into the Beatles way back in high school the earlier stuff on One was a huge factor in getting me into them; harmonies and good upbeat hooks. But it's pre- & post-Rubber Soul...after which I love.

I didn't really think much about the earlier records until I started getting really into late-50's early-60's pop, blues, skiffle, and 'rock' music. The clearer a picture I had of what the landscape was when they came out, the more impressed I was with the band from day one.

I really like early, all-in-one-take rock and soul music. Almost all of it is imperfect....stumbly and swinging, you know, and that's a huge plus to my ears. The limitations of two track recording and the simplicity of the subject matter pre-mid 60's aren't so much a weakness as they are a different shade of a known quality...pre-rebellion punk design, recorded in big rooms by engineers in lab coats. Not only that, but with music growing so thoroughly entrenched in minor key songwriting the last few decades, I find I really dig those major key-heavy 60's pop records more and more. I wish I could play them all on 45. I really do.

Having said all that, the Beatles were actually tighter performers than most other bands that came out of the era. All records from that era lean a bit on the sloppy side ("Okay, everybody get it right this time, because we have to record six more songs today"), but The Beatles really did a remarkable job (the remasters really reveal this). Especially....strangely enough....Ringo. There are literally just a small handful of times in all their recording sessions where a song has to be restarted because Ringo screwed up. Go figure.

These days, I honestly think I listen to Please Please Me, Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale, and Help more than I do Revolver or Sgt. Pepper. Those other records are incredibly cool, yeah, and I've worn them out, but I find a lot of fresh air in the pre-"We're gonna change the world, oh I guess not" days. Naivety and joy are table wines. Pour yourself a glass and enjoy the sunset.

What human emotions/qualities are box wine, though? I think I'm more of a box wine guy.

Butt sex and macular degeneration, actually.

After years of intentionally not listening to pre- Rubber Soul albums, I find myself listening to Help! more than any other album these days.

Im gonna have to give this a listen, its been a while

I used to argue with my friends, back in the day, about Help!. So many tried to write it off and I was always telling them it stop being stupid and LISTEN to the fucking thing!

It's so good. Help! isn't my favorite. But it's the album that got me listening to the Beatles. Growing up my parents listened to Abbey Road all the time. We owned the White Album, but my parents never wanted to listen to it. So the thing gathered dust on the shelf.

One day, driving around, I heard Help! on the local classic rock station and I decided I wanted to buy the album. I did. After that, my love for the Beatles took off. Help! was my gateway drug.

I was always a casual listener to the Beatles, growing up my dad being a huge fan actually turned me off, and its sad to say that until the #1s album came out like 10 or so years ago that i started listening to them more, i got that and loved all the songs on it, and i think close to that time Vacate talked me into actually getting the albums starting with rubber soul and i have been hooked ever since. Though the early ones still never really did it for me, but im gonna go through them again soon and see how it goes

I remember taking The White Album off my parent's dusty shelf and giving it a spin. I immediately walked up to my mother and asked, "What's the matter with you?!" She didn't understand. I demanded to know why we always listened to Abbey Road and never listened to The White Album. I couldn't understand why she'd been hiding the White Album from me.

She just shrugged and said, "I don't know. It's weird."

Parents. Amirite?

Haha, usually

Aside from the plastic Fisher Price toy records I had as a kid and buying Monkees tapes by phone via the infomercials, one of my first musical memories is sitting in my parents' living room with those giant 70's headphones and two plastic sticks spinning the White Album and drumming along, spinning Revolution 1 over and over.