WITH THE BEATLES

The Beatles

Proto-Prog

2.90 | 516 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Ivan_Melgar_M
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator

THE BEATLES is a very contradictory band, capable of sublime albums as "Abbey Road" but with a simply horrendous early career, to the point of being fathers of what we know today as POP.

Except for Roll Over Beethoven (which is by Chuck Berry), there's are very few decent moments in "With The Beatles", an album full of non transcendental songs, anodyne tunes and harmless music without teeth. to complete the scenario tracks that are not remotely close to the three minutes mark, just all we criticize of mainstream, but because this songs were written by THE BEATLES, people seem to forgive everything.

Even though I agree with the policy of the site to add all the complete discography of an artist, in cases like this one, I wonder if there could be a solution, because this album should be in POP Archives not here, as a fact I believe everything before "Rubber Soul" should be avoided.

Won't even try to review track by track as I usually do, because I believe there's nothing worthy to be analyzed, but as a complete work, the album must be one of the cheesiest and simplest moments in the history of Rock & Roll.

Plus it would be a futile attempt, being that the songs end almost as son as they start, with such similar length that seem manufactured in an assembly line, the shortest lasts 1:47 minutes and the longest 2:47, so there's very little to talk about a catchy chorus and a verse that have aged terribly as most POP releases, created to reach the peak in a short period of time but also to vanish even faster after selling some millions of albums, this ones have survived longer because of the name BEATLES, but not for the quality.

As I said before, the only memorable moments I find are "Roll Over Beethoven" and Ringo Starr's vocal performance on "I Wanna Be Your Man", which has always surprised me, the rest is pretty forgettable.

Two stars because I don't want to start WW III, but was tempted to give one.

Ivan_Melgar_M | 2/5 | 2009-5-20

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