LOVE

I borrowed this from a friend, intrigued but not willing to spend real money on what could be taken for even more cynical exploitation of the band.

I returned it without even copying a single track. I just wondered "what is the point of this?". Many tracks appeared relatively unchanged (so why buy this?) and those that were radically remixed prompted me to ask "so why buy this?". The worst example seemed to me to be "Strawberry Fields", a scratchy, acoustic take. What's the purpose of this inclusion, to demonstrate how George Martin could take a pretty poor performance and turn it into something magical?

Not for me. If I ever do get the urge to get more Beatles stuff I'll go back to the recordings and productions that were relevant at the time they were made.

This is a generally poor release, another attempt at milking more money out of the Beatles legend. Like the first reviewer, I fail to see the point of this release, if you're a seasoned fan of the Beatles and have all of their songs memorized, listening to these merged/mixed songs is really akward.

A prime example of this is track 10. Who ever thought of mixing Mr. Kite with She's So Heavy!? An attempt at pure boldness? It comes of horribly, the mystical child like Mr. Kite merges into the intense big pounding drama "riff" of She's So Heavy, and It's an embarrasing listen.

There's nothing special at all, the other tracks contain some moments of weirdness and a sense of things being misplaced, but the odd chance that something actually sounds good together is the second redeeming feauture of the release, next to the excellent production and remastering of the music. I wish they would do the Beatles catologue like this, the sound is superb.

If you're a mad beatles fan, this is worth picking up, but please don't get this album as a starter if you're a newbie, it will forever taint your perception of the original songs and their intended arrangements.

What makes this a 4-star album on a progressive web site? Uniqueness. I have never heard anything quite like this and probably never will again in my lifetime. If you are a fan of the Fab Four please do not overlook this incredible cd. I find it to be extraordinary. If you feel that somehow this violates the sanctity of the original songs then stick with the remastered albums that are easily available to all. I understand and I won't think less of you. But, IMHO, this is the most progressive Beatles album ever. That's saying a lot, I know, but hear me out. George Martin was and still is a genius. Anyone else would have made a mess of this project but he has created a masterpiece. It's not just a medley. It's like a phantasmagoric hallucinatory dream about the Beatles and I'm sure that's what the Cirque creates with it onstage. But let's leave the show out of it and listen to the music. It's a joy to recognize snippets of songs cleverly interwoven with the familiar melodies and the fact that the cd plays like one very long song is a trip in itself. Just a few highlights: The gorgeous harmonies of "Because" in acapella, "Mr.Kite/She's So Heavy," and "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" are all spectacular meshings of texture and musical color that really catch you off-guard. The engineering and production are magnificent. "Enough already" I hear you saying but I'm just urging you to give this a spin, especially if you know every song by heart. It's a treat for the ears and the mind and a fitting, loving tribute to the band and music that Mr. Martin had a big part in creating and nurturing.

Love is the soundtrack to some Cirque du Soleil show of the same name. As if I didn't like the Cirque du Soleil enough to begin with, they decided to remix and splice some of the greatest music ever written to appease some pretentious, wealthy WASPs who are too good to see a real circus. What amazes and even stuns me is that Sir George Martin actually agreed to destroy the legacy he helped to build.

For the most part the songs are the same, but they are spliced together in some horrible manner, creating some sort of artificial medley. This album should at the very least make Beatles fans uncomfortable. Hopefully, this is the last cash-in on the Beatles legacy. I thought George Martin was infallble up til this point. Love is to my vision of George Martin as Biff seeing the lady in his father's hotel room in the play Death of a Salesman. Reality shatters the illusion. This album might have been somewhat better if they hadn't used some inferior verions of classics. The scratchy acoustic version of Strawberry Fields sounds like it was recorded in the 20s.

This album has no redeemable qualities. If you love Beatles music, buy Beatles albums. Steer clear of this pathetic cash-in.

Grade: F

I can understand why many people look to this release as to just antoher speculation on the Fab Four's name, and maybe EMI had that sole purpose in mind. I can also understand that many listeners be appalled to hear their favourite classics being tampered with.

Anyway, although I deeply love The Beatles' music and I consider them the main source of inspiration to over 90% of modern music, I am absolutely no purist, and I personally consider this release to be an excellent addition to my music collection.

I just love the way George Martin and his son merged the various songs together, and I enjoyed the challenge of discovering the uncredited excerpts inserted in the tracks (for instance the "Hey Bulldog" riff inside "Lady Madonna").

The first time I heard "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/ Helter Skelter" I almost fell off the edge of my seat: the way the first song transforms into the following is absolutely perfect and amazing, just like they always were intended to be performed that way.

Other standout tracks are "Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing", "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" and the aforementioned "Lady Madonna".

In my opinion this is a splendid work of art, and George Martin's pure genius shines on through its entire span.

Naturally, if you are a purist you should steer away from this and similar initiatives. But if you like something more daring and you don't consider music masterpieces to be like standing, unmodifiable monoliths, give this album a try! You might be pleasantly surprised!

A mash-up of Beatle songs? Sacrilege! Well, Giles Martin says in the liner notes it felt a bit like "painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa" but this isn't really the case - if you want to listen to the originals, they're still there. This project is the music for a Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas which, judging by the documentary which was on over Christmas, looks stunning. George and Giles have taken a number of Beatles songs and, with the Fabs' approval, chopped and changed them into something new. Only the string backing to Harrison's demo of "While my guitar gently weeps" was recorded specially for this CD. Snippets of songs float around and they are sometimes hard to recognise (I still haven't worked out what has been added to the chorus of "Lucy in the sky with diamonds").

Without going through every song (as they are so well known), I will just pick out the highlight and lowlights.

Highlights

As another reviewer mentioned, the segueing of Mr Kite into the guitar riff from "I Want You" is probably the best moment on the CD and still gives me shivers even though I've heard it probably 20 times. The laying of the "Within you, without you" vocal over the drum and bass pattern from "Tomorrow Never Knows" is another moment of genius. "Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" is good although a bit short, otherwise it would have made a good single. It's the only song on the CD which is a bit "Stars on 45". "I am the Walrus" sounds fantastic, and "Revolution" leaps out of the speakers and you can understand why people took the original single back complaining about the distortion.

Lowlights

I'm not sure about the ambulance siren over "Julia" - is this intended as a reference to the death of John's mother? Also, two of the older tracks ("I want to hold your hand" and "Help") are presented pretty much as is, except for a bit of editing and crowd noise on the former, and I don't really see the point of that.

Overall, any Beatles fan should get this, if only for the fantastic-sounding 5.1 DVD.

One minor gripe - the bit which is credited as "Cry Baby Cry (transition)" is actually McCartney's short and uncredited "Can you take me back" which follows "Cry Baby Cry" on "The Beatles".

A new Beatles ? Yes it is. Do you think that The Beatles were not in the progressive side of rock at the end of the 6o's ? You certainly right. But today, they are ! With that strange but incredible "Love" album, you'll find a new Beatles sound and a new pleasure to listen to all of their famous and great songs. Go quick to listen to this guys ! You'll 'love' it ;)

2 stars at best! I got rather mixed feelings about the album. On one hand I'm a Beatle fan and appreciate every rarities' or re-mastered albums versions of well known and lost-and-found tapes. So anything new and authentic is great (like Dali's or Picasso's originals). And from thnat standpoint the disk has some value for hard-core fans. On the other hand, the way re-mixing is done makes me puke at times. So IMHO one has to be very careful before spending his own money. Unless you prefer watching at somebody's mosaic made of a painter's works, not the originals... One big mistake I see in the very approach of producers is this. The Beatles heritage is known too well (to a note) to apply the common looping/remixing standards thoughtlessly. If the Martins would have released 2 separate disks - 1 with rather kiddish re-mixes (which do have some good spots) and the other one with remastered and converted to 5.1 version of more or less intact masterpieces (and this is precisely what the tracks ARE!). Cutting down songs and mixing up at times alien things may be a descent approach for the sake of having fun, but not for fans like me. I mean, Beatles would have never released crap of that kind themselves, they were too productive to re-do old stuff (xept for a few allusions on their own numbers, which is known well). One track I did like was Strawberry Fields forever, which if I'm right was made of at least 3 pieces (demo, some studio takes and regular version of the song). It does have some charm. But things like A Day in the Life or Mr Kite or Blackbird/Yesterday look tasteless to me. And it's a surprise for I couldn't believe that George Martin would ever go as low as be associated with such crappy remixing. So to make it short... Better borrow the disk or preview it somehow before you follow many other's path. If it's no big deal for ya, do your own re-mastering and separate the tracks you like and make a separate release. But from the heritage and historical aspects I see no value in this effort. Or just wait for a good 5.1 or stereo remasters.

This is pure exploitation of the Beatles fan base. An absolutely overkilled production released just in time to hit the marketplace prior to Christmas 2006. I guess re-inventing the wheel to play the same songs in another format will suckerpunch many die hards into buying this. If you are a completionist then I suggest you go for it, well you probably have already. Otherwise concentrating on collecting the albums instead. This is almost as exploitive as PinK Floyd's release a best of...Echoes. Echoes of a rip off more like. Of course the songs are good. The big question I have to ask is..why? Avoid at all costs.

This is a very peculiar album. A remix of The Beatles best works seemed quite frightful to me. These fears were quickly expelled after i listened to it.the tracks were put together quite masterfully. my favorite is the version of While My Guitar Genty Weeps which is by far much more beautiful then the original in my opinion. In total I think its a 3 star rating. Its good but not exactly stellar. very middle.

This is an interesting collection but nothing essential for a Beatles fan. This was made to be a soundtrack for a Circe de Soleil production based on the Beatles music. This is a remix album produced by George Martin and his son Giles. On some songs completely different takes are used than the single/album versions. On other songs more the one song are mixed together. The only "new" music here was the strings recorded for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". The sound is very good and is similar to the later 2009 remasters.

I bought this when it came out before Christmas 2006. It was nice to see that the physical CD copies of this sold very well. I have only heard this all the way through maybe 5 times since I bought it. The success of Love was responsible for other remix albums like the Bob Marley one that came out not long after. While this is impressive, I agree with Paul McCartney that they didn't go "far enough." "I Am The Walrus", "Help", "Revolution", "Back In The USSR", "A Day In The Life", "Sgt. Pepper's...(Reprise)" and "All You Need Is Love" are basically the same as the single/album versions. Kind of pointless, really.

"I Want To Hold Your Hand" is just the studio version with the screaming audience from the Ed Sullivan Show added. "Because" is just the vocals with bird sounds. At the end you hear the last note of "A Day In The Life" which segues into "Get Back". This starts with the drum solo from "The End" as well as some of the guitar solos from that song. The majority of the song is the studio version of "Get Back" with crowd noises. "Glass Onion" is cut-up, you can hear the brass from "Penny Lane". "Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" is the most interesting track here; a nice mix of all three songs.

"Gnik Nus" is the vocals from "Sun King" backwards with a tamboura from another song. "Something" is mostly the album version but with the beginning of "Blue Jay Way" and vocals from "Nowhere Man" added at the end. "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite" is basically the album version with the guitar riff from "I Want You..." and the vocals from "Helter Skelter" added. "Strawberry Field Forever" starts with a count-in; this sounds like a different take than the single version. You hear horns from "Sgt. Pepper's...", the piano solo from "In My Life" and the brass from "Penny Lane". Then the end to "Hello Goodbye"

"Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" is a great mix of both songs. "Octopus' Garden" is the vocals from that song with the music from "Good Night" at first. Then you hear sound effects from "Yellow Submarine" and it goes into the music from "Octopus". The music from "Sun King" at the end. "Lucy In The Sky..." sounds like a different take than the album version. Music from "Hey Bulldog" is mixed in. "Come Together" is basically the album version with a bit of "Dear Prudence" and the end of "Cry Baby Cry" added. "Hey Jude" starts off with the single version then has an a capella part with drums and a cool bass part from somewhere else.

Nice to listen to once in awhile. 2 stars.

I received this as birthday present in 2006 the year "Love" was released and did not know what to expect as I had every album of the Beatles and considered it just another compilation. When I first put this on I was absolutely stunned as it was a genuine makeover of Beatles classics. The way the songs are remixed is astounding and the songs merge seamlessly together, overlapped, pastiches from all sorts of sources, segued with transitions, and a ton of surprises that I am not going to give away here. I can tell you emphatically though that this is a completely unique compilation with definitive Beatles classics compiled together. There are lots of edits but it is all done so lovingly taking great care to maintain the best of each song, adding new experiences but not ruining the original versions.

Some highlights are the a capella Because (2:44), Glass Onion (1:20), Eleanor Rigby/Julia (Transition) (3:05), brilliant I Am The Walrus (4:28), and the medley of Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing (1:54), with the same drum beat mixed perfectly together. Some weird moments will make you sit up and take notice such as backwards Sun King, Gnik Nus (0:55), and Something/Blue Jay Way (Transition) (3:29), that sound beautiful together. I also adore this version of "Sgt Pepper" treasures, Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter (3:22); the merging of all these tracks are incredible sounding as though they belong together.

It is nice to hear classics revamped and given a new breath of life, such as indelible Blackbird/Yesterday (2:31), and psychedelic masterclass, Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows (3:07) followed appropriately by LSD celebration Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds (4:10). Even though I have heard these songs ad nauseum, these newer makeovers are triumphs.

Here Comes The Sun/The Inner Light (Transition) (4:18) is a mesmirising section, along with stalwart classics Come Together/Dear Prudence/Cry Baby Cry (Transition) (4:45), again blended lovingly in the studio from the original masters. It was great to hear A Day In The Life (5:08) alternative versions, which are the same as "Anthology" versions but still remains my favourite Beatles song in any format.

There are a lot of songs that have little variation as if they were too precious to touch but this is a shame really because we can always listen to the originals so they should have went wild with this chance to revamp old material. Alas, they did not and so it is easy to look at this as rather an obsolete package. however there are enough interesting pastiches and alt mixes to enthuse me. It is better than a boring old compilation in any case. Furthermore this is a progressive album, with tons of effects and creative musical montages, like a concept album without a concept.

The booklet is all new art with montages of the fab four given a decidedly modern look. The Cirque de Soleil stage show that went with this is of course a spectacle for Beatles fanatics, and I have seen the DVD of this and enjoyed it. Nevertheless the album 'soundtrack' itself is one of my favourite excursions into revisiting Beatles territory because all my faves are here and jammed together onto one amazing album. "Love" doesn't replace the originals but it certainly enhances a new listening experience, and shows that The Beatles are always going to be masters of their craft, and continue to draw massive crowds. Their legacy will live on with such projects as "Love" and so let it be.

This cd was a collaboration between Geroge Martin and his son Giles when they were asked to work for the Cirque du Soleil. They have created this soundscape using any sound from the original Beatles multi-track tapes. The used sound to combine some songs or use the sound of songs to go in other songs. The results are impressive especially in 5.1. It's about an hour and a half medley that can be listened like one song with not much pause between songs. The sound is all over the room and is a new experience to hear those songs that we all know for a long time. I could hear some heavy parts that I never heard on the old versions. This is a soundtrack for a film with a nice choice of songs, the more accessible ones and the more experimental ones from the latest albums of The Beatles. This cd could serve as a introduction to the band and in that case, you can be satisfied with the stereo cd, but if you want to hear the Beatles songs with new arrangements and in surround, you need the DVD-audio. This is more than a simple and easy compilation of the bands greatest hits, it's more than 2 years of hard rock with the collaboration of many people to brings this to the public.

Love is a far cry from the "Beatles Movie Medley." What we have here is mash-ups of well-known and not-so-well-known Beatles songs. And even among the most familiar tunes, some of the source material evidently comes from alternate takes, I assume from the same font from which the Anthology albums were drawn.

I expected more outcry when this came out: messing with history, etc. Maybe George Martin's presence softened the blow. At any rate, I've never been able to see how products like this 'destroy' the original works - - assuming that the originals are still easily available (this is very different from what George Lucas tried to do with the first Star Wars movie: replace the original with an altered version, and restrict access to the original). But you know what? If the Beatles were at their height today (i.e., during the mashup/remix era), they'd probably release something like this themselves.

Of course, that doesn't mean it would be great.

And Love isn't great. While some projects like this are intended as dance-remix albums, Love apparently exists because part of the Apple Corps contract with Cirque du Soleil required the delivery of a unique soundtrack for the show. As long as the work was being created, why not put it on sale? (Indeed, in the US alone, it has sold more than two million units and hit #4 on the album chart.)

Maybe the music is incomplete without the Cirque du Soleil visuals, but for whatever reason, it strikes me as no more than a pleasant curiosity. I would recommend it for fans only - - and probably remix fans as much as Beatles fans.

Usually, a theatrical performance that has a story strung together by songs from an artist or composer(s), but not performed by them, is called a jukebox musical.

Instead of other live performers, what if the original tracks are newly remixed for the story? You certainly would have a deconstruction of the "jukebox" part! This is the case with Love, the Cirque de Soleil presentation of the music of the Beatles.

Even the concept of a remix album has been reinterpreted here too. Mashups and digs through alternate mixes from the band's Anthology abound. This itself is significant, as remix albums can be a crapshoot. For every notable Lee "Scratch" Perry dub collection, there are at least several that can be each characterized, as was in a review in the former Island Ear of Billy Idol's Vital Idol, "a textbook case in studio self-indulgence." Rather, Love is a showcase for sound combinations that are pleasant and intriguing.

Some tracks are mashups with samples of songs interpolated into others. Sound effects of horse whinnies are borrowed from "Good Morning, Good Morning" to give voice, so to speak, to Henry the Horse in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite." (Hey, this is a circus soundtrack, you know!) This is besides the Sgt. Pepper track melding into "I Want You (She's so Heavy)," making it also one of several medleys here.

A precedent for this approach was "Beyond the Valley of a Day in the Life," a drop-the-needle sound collage by the Residents released in 1977 as one side of The Beatles Play the Residents and the Residents Play the Beatles. Another was, curiously enough, "A Medley of Beatle Tunes," an "a cappella" comedy routine by Father Guido Sarducci.

A second type of mashup for Love - vocals dubbed over a completely different track - also results in some intriguing listening. Check out "Because" featuring ambient sounds. Meanwhile, "Gnik Nus," which is a backwards "Sun King" laid over a tanpura drone, taking the band's penchant for backwards tapes to its logical conclusion!

If you are into that kind of mix, try if you can to locate a video for "Baby You're a Rich Man (Ecstasy Mix)," with the vocals laid over The Go! Team instrumental "Friendship Update."

Another kind of remix consists of highlighting certain parts that bring a different twist into the listening, such as a higher volume for John Lennon's voice in "Glass Onion" and the bridge of plucked strings emphasized in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

"Strawberry Fields Forever" takes this further exponentially, with John Lennon's unaltered voice and solo guitar from a demo version to lay it on top of the familiar instrumental. This may be the ultimate internal (same artist) mashup, featuring also horns from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Not to mention, on top of it all, "Penny Lane" and even the harpsichord from "Piggies" and the end of "Hello Goodbye."

The crowning medley moment is probably just of two tracks - "Tomorrow Never Knows / Within You Without You" - that weave tautly the energy and depth of both songs.

Recommended for: anyone open to Beatles remixes/mashups that strongly challenge those production notions.

What a LOVE-ly idea for one of the world's most popular musical bands to come together with the 21st century's greatest show on Earth, namely the Montreal based mind-blowing Cirque du Soleil. Nobody wanted THE BEATLES to end in 1970 after delivering some of the most catchy pop melodies of all time but all things come to an end and unfortunately for better or worse the band's record company has been cashing in ever since. The music of THE BEATLES has been recycled in every way possible with one pointless compilation after another. But every now and again a veritable flicker of creative mojo sparks allowing a project that honors the past while finding relevancy in the contemporary world. LOVE is actually quite different from a normal comp and a very inspired way to reanimate the Fab Four's classics in a mashup styled soundtrack that accompanies the live performances of the Cirque du Soleil.

Rather than tritely compiling yet another greatest hits compendium for the umpteenth time, the fifth BEATLE, George Martin along with his son Giles assembled elements form 130 different commercially released material together with demo recordings of THE BEATLES' entire career resulting in a veritable treasure trove of BEATLES mania reimagined for the 21st century. While LOVE officially features 26 separate track listings, many of these songs are medleys that bleed together as well as containing mere snippets of music and lyrics interpolated into key moments. While most tracks appear to sound identical to the singles released during the Fab Four's heyday, others such as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" appear in unreleased demo forms although not always to my satisfaction (this particular acoustic track isn't as effective).

Completely remixed as well as mashed up, LOVE was one of the few post-BEATLES archival releases that found George Martin at the helm and his last effort before joining John and George in the great beyond with his passing in 2016. Crafted with precision and great care, LOVE was Martin's last labor of LOVE and it really shows in how well the many faces of THE BEATLES sit so well together in a constant consciousness stream of the 60s chart toppers. For example "I Am The Walrus" sits snuggly next to "I Want To Hold Your Hand" juxtaposing the mop top teenie-bopper early years (complete with audience screaming) with the studio-only psychedelia of the band's latter years that forged entirely new paths in the world of rock music. Graced with a shining crisp production, LOVE rejuvenates THE BEATLES experience in a way no other compilation of the last 50 years really has.

Given the mashup craze was going full force in the 2000s with artists like Danger Mouse and Jay-Z deftly blurring unrelated musical expressions together seamlessly, Paul McCartney expressed a passionate enthusiasm in the project as he himself had hired mashup artists for his own tours during the same period. Another interesting feature is that every format had different playing times with the CD running at 78:38, vinyl at 79:08, DVD-audio (80:28) and iTunes digital releases with bonus tracks that add up to 86:41, thus making LOVE a double album's length by 60s album time limits. Given all the music was recorded between 1963-1969, LOVE was given a modern technological upgrade and despite showcasing music decades old at the time of its 2006 release and succeeds in clearly demonstrating why THE BEATLES remain some of the top dogs of pop rock songwriting in the history of music.

A divisive release for sure as some scream exploitation of the classics while others praising the album as a relevant celebration of the past. I fall into the latter camp as i'm perfectly fine with artists revisiting and reinterpreting their own musical catalogue as long as they have found a unique and relevant angle for doing so. LOVE was probably a project nobody saw coming whether it be BEATLES stalwarts or Cirque du Soleil fanatics but every once in a while the cross-pollinating effects of two entertainment powerhouses actually comes to fruition in a meaningful and brilliant way. Perhaps it's not true that all you need is LOVE but it sure makes a great supplemental album beyond THE BEATLES' original canon.

Of course the album was a major success going double platinum in the USA and racing up to the top 5 albums chart in dozens of nations. Few things are as exhilarating as a BEATLES musical marathon and LOVE provided the perfect reunion album that never could be. As John Lennon famously said, "Make LOVE, not war" and with this collaborative effort with Cirque du Soleil, THE BEATLES could honor his profound wishes. THE BEATLES was a pop band with pop hits and engaged in pop culture in just about every way possible so to claim this sort of project was a sellout actually belies THE BEATLES' own cross-entertainment endeavors that included short films, animation and every possible form of merchandising possible. THE BEATLES were the epitome of popular culture and an album like LOVE only reestablishes the band's relevance in the world of music even some four decades after its last rooftop concert appearance. While most comps are rather unnecessary padding in your collection, this one on the other hand is magical mystery tour in its own right and one that John and George surely would've LOVE-d.