With The Beatles

Not my favorite Beatles album

It's the Beebles! Can't believe they had women -fainting- over these songs. They're all perfectly alright, Rock n' Roll tripe.

10/10 for the cover art, it has this minimalistic vibe that I quite like.

But the release in itself it's the beatles when they were still a boys band, my favorite songs were covers of earlier songs and it's telling. Hopefully they got better with the time.

Favorite Songs: All My Loving ; Please Mister Postman ; Money

Just inklings of what they were going to be. Seems odd that there were so many covers, but the arrangements really were great and added to the Beatles folklore. 3+

Favorite track(s): All My Loving, Till There Was You, I Wanna Be Your Man

Heard before
Previous rating: 6/10

I didn't hate listening to this. I didn't love it either.

By their standards to come, it feels overly derivative and the production is a bit naff at times.

Still cool vibes though.

Not my favorite era of the Beatles, and honestly I was anticipating a low rating here. Every track on the album was fun and enjoyable. 60s pop at its best.

My only real criticism couldn't be helped. Stereo mixes of the time were fucking awful. I'd rather listen to mono that vocals in one ear and instruments in the other. I'm so glad stereo mixing made great leaps early on because I'd hate to listen to some of my favorite classic rock tracks like this. Ugh

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5.

Ultimately, it’s just a less polished version of the soundscape they’d really flesh out by “A Hard Day’s Night”. John & Paul’s songwriting skills are solid, but they aren’t quite there yet, which is totally fair for 1963, so this album relies a lot more on covers. To be fair, they’re pretty good covers, but I don’t think the Beatles can quite pull off the Motown style with the same natural swagger as the original tracks probably did.

I mean, look, this is the earliest one they have on the list. It’s naturally going to be the weakest, even if it’s still good. It might be a bit closer to a 4, but I can’t really find a reason to justify bumping it down to a 4, since I was just kinda charmed by almost every track here. It’s a solid 33 minutes with a good energy throughout, and while they’re still clearly trying to figure out the dynamics of the band & who should sing which track & what instruments work & which ones don’t, it still results in a good album. Not a great album, at least by the historical standards most people remember them by, but a pretty good one for 1963. I liked it, and it’s a 4.5 bumped up to a 5 for me.

My goodness, this site is a joke. Not RYM, which I'll be posting this review to on Saturday the 7th, but the 1001albumsgenerator site. I love the function, but the fact that this is rated at a 3.66 over Brilliant Corners, Blue, Sea Change, Funeral... IN A SILENT WAY FOR FUCK'S SAKE??? I mean, okay. It's not bad at all. It's just really... like we've all heard little child, right?? We've all heard roll over beethoven, right??? These are bad songs! And even the album's more undeniably spectacular cuts (All My Loving, Hold Me Tight, You Really Got A Hold On Me) are still obviously indebted to their influences. There's a lot of energy here, and SO much personality, but nowhere near enough actual quality to back any of that up! Like there is NO justification for little child and we all know it. Roll over beethoven is one of the dullest, most nothing tracks ever. Everything else is pretty passable but when I say that, keep in mind that sooooo much of this is ripped straight from better (almost always Black) artists. Y'all it's alright but please.
7.3/10

Some interesting covers and solid originals

Growing pains album for the Beatles. It sits awkwardly between the cutesy, if derivative Please Please Me and a much more defined sound of Hard Days Night. All My Loving is such a banger though

220-something record in and finally a Beatles album! And an early one too! I’m glad I can have some semblance of chronology for a change.

Like I've said in other reviews, it's a little unfair to compare a record to the same band's later works. The Beatles became a phenomenon on the back of this record, but they didn't become THE BEATLES(TM) for the songs here. So, let's put aside the fact that they will become the biggest and most influential band in the whole world (forever and ever, probably) and look at this like any other mid-sixties pop album. By that measure... it's totally fine. If you're a person who seeks substance in everything they listen to, look elsewhere. But if you want a fun record you can still put on, turn up, and dance around the house like a goofball - this record is for you! There's not even a song on this record long enough to justify skipping - at 3:01 long, "You Really Got A Hold On Me" is the second longest song in the whole first half of The Beatles' catalog. Fun fact, at 3:09, "Ticket To Ride" from Help! is the longest song on the first seven Beatles records!

Better than Coldplay

Not their best album by any means. Still better than 99% of anything released by anyone else. It speaks volumes that this group of guys recorded for 7 years together and had the impact in music and culture that they did. All of their accolades are deserved.

Not the best of their works. Found this one to be a bit bland

Overall still enjoyable

4 ⭐️

It won’t be long is less well known song but so obviously the Beatles and early Merseybeat that is can be hard to rate an album .

It’s hard to say the impact on western music they had on. this early stuff is great but played with a bit of a straight bat

The years in Hamburg honed them into a tight machine allowing them to explore variations from standard chord structures, they were innovating without leaving the audience behind.

The early albums are a little like a history lesson . So obviously the 60 s but not (always) sounding dated and possibly quaint.

Weirdly probably more important than later albums , Apart from maybe Sgt Pepper’s, but not as good.

The safe option of covers makes sense to break the US but makes this album a little slow.

Not their best, strangely a lot of the best stuff here is the Motown covers and All My Loving which is a standout early track for them

I was ready to give this for starts. Then I re-listened and realized that many of the tracks I liked the most were covers of songs that I really liked. And generally the originals were better. So I would be giving them stars for choosing to cover good songs and covering them adequately. Of course there are some good originals on here but I think I’m going to have to knock it down to three stars because it’s really mostly covers.

Arguably the most important pop record ever.

As the poet Philip Larkin wrote, "sexual intercourse began in 1963." It's hard to overstate how much the Beatles transformed popular culture, personal politics, and social mores at that time. Beatlemania was a world-changing event for young people, especially girls. This record signals a total redistribution of the sensible (what people now crudely call "shifting the overton window").

Contemporary listeners often misunderstand the early Beatles era as a necessary phase to get into the more "revolutionary" style of their middle period. It's true that the revolutionary New Left movements of the mid-late 60s (the anti-war movement, the free speech movement, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, psychedelic counterculture, etc) all had some kernel that originated with the screaming girls who overpowered the police (the late great Barbara Ehrenreich makes this point in one of the best essays ever written about the band). But this early phase was radical in itself. The Beatles completely changed how people thought of the auteur-performer in rock n roll; if you need proof, look at the list of 1001 albums and count how many guitar rock bands wrote their own songs before 1963. (spoiler: it's 1...Buddy Holly and the Crickets, which might as well be a solo act with a backing band. Compare that to the number only 2 years later in 1965.) Not to mention, they had a totally distinct visual style (thanks to Brian) and were witty and charming as hell. When they landed in NYC in early 1964, they were like aliens from another planet.

For context, the Beatles also released 3 non-album singles within 6 months of this album: "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," and "From Me to You." Part of the problem with the 1001 album project is it places undue importance on "the album" as the ultimate recorded musical work. In 1963, albums were still a relatively new medium and the Beatles were still figuring out how to do it; they didn't even consider putting their 3 strongest singles on their new album and insisted on including only brand new material. They were among the first musicians to think of albums as complete art objects (see the Astrid Kircherr-style cinema verite photograph on the cover) instead of just a way to repackage popular singles around some extra filler. In other words, without With The Beatles there is no 1001 albums list.

More of a Colorado potato beetle than a stag beetle. Not the best but still a beetle.