Review Summary: Similar to Magical Mystery Tour, any better???
Before I start this review I would like to point out that I am an absolute Bealtes fanatic, but am trying not to be too biased.
Basically I love it, and don't understand people who say it's their worst album.
Now I have to admit that the second side isn't up to much, but to be fair it's not even the Beatles. This fact jades the album as a whole but should not jade the Beatle's work as their 6 tracks are all superb.
I guess these two albums are like Radiohead's Amnesiac and Kid A, on Yellow submarine and Magical Mystery Tour the Beatles seem to have taken a break from pop and just messed around till they came up with some genius.
Everyone has heard Yellow Submarine and know what it's about, and if you don't like it you're a spoil sport. It's excellent, a lovely lazy acoustica over care free lines and whimsical noises. This is the Beatles saying "Right, we're the biggest band ever, let's see if we can pull this off" and they do pull it off amazingly. It's one of the best examples of one of the best features of the Beatles: however serious they got they were never afraid to just p**s about and have a laugh.
Only a Northern Song is also reflective of this, even commenting on music's authorship, "You may think the chords are wrong, but they're not, we just wrote them like that" is sung over chords so dissonant it's unbelievable. Balls to punk, to me this is rebellion, and people back in 67 must have been bowled over when they heard this.
All Together Now is pretty much the same thing as Yellow Submarine, yet a little better. It's even more singalongtoable. However, I guess it could annoy some people that two of the same type of song are on the same album.
Hey Bulldog is amazingly fresh, even nowadays. Personally I think it's better than all Led Zep's riffs (and I love Led Zep), it's just so cool and before its time. Remember it was written in a few hours. And again, this being a not so serious album, we have a lot of messing about, such as Paul barking in the backing track and other such malarkey.
It's All Too Much opens with a guitar scream that just immediately screams Hendrix. Then cool organ and the drumming kicks in. If you don't get up and dance to this you better have some form of disability or you're just sad.
The last Beatles track is "All You Need is Love", which I think needs no description as you all know how good it is already.
So overally, yes they have better albums, no the Beatles bit doesn't last very long, and yes they do have things a little more experimenary, but god, these six songs are worth it, and who knows, you might even like George Martin's second side as well.
