Here’s What Each of The Beatles Considered Their Favorite Album

Each of the Fab Four once revealed what their favorite albums from The Beatles’ career in the 1960s were. Some of these might surprise you. Others, however, are perfectly understandable.

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Ringo Starr – ‘Abbey Road’ (1969)

The Beatles’ famed drummer once said, without restraint, that the second side of the 1969 album Abbey Road (better known as the “Abbey Road Medley”) was his favorite thing that The Beatles ever did.

“For me, that would be the second side of ‘Abbey Road,’” Starr said in an interview with Rock Cellar Magazine in 2012. “That one is my favorite because I just love all those bits and pieces that weren’t full songs that John and Paul had been working on and pulled all together — ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’, ‘Polythene Pam’, and ‘She Came in Through The Bathroom Window’.”

George Harrison – ‘Rubber Soul’ (1965)

George Harrison, the Fab Four’s famed guitarist, was never one to throw opinions around willy-nilly. He was known as the “quiet Beatle” for a reason. But Harrison did make it clear at one point that he had a lot of love for The Beatles’ 1965 record, Rubber Soul.

“‘Rubber Soul’ was my favourite album,” Harrison said in The Beatles’ Anthology in 1995. “Even at that time, I think that it was the best one we made; we certainly knew we were making a good album. We did spend a bit more time on it and tried new things. But the most important thing about it was that we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before.”

John Lennon – ‘The Beatles’ (1968)

John Lennon was often the instigator when it came to his beef with Paul McCartney. He said in a 1971 interview that McCartney didn’t like the White Album, the band’s self-titled release from 1968. But Lennon himself loved it.

“Paul was always upset about the ‘White Album’,” said Lennon. “He never liked it because on that one I did my music, he did his, and George did his. And first, he didn’t like George having so many tracks. He wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul. So he never liked that album, and I always preferred it to all the other albums, including ‘Pepper’, because I thought the music was better. The ‘Pepper’ myth is bigger, but the music on the ‘White Album’ is far superior, I think.”

Paul McCartney – ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ (1967)

Paul McCartney once said that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1967 album that many a fan considers to be the band’s magnum opus, was his personal favorite.

“I’d pick ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’, meself, because I had a lot to do with it,” McCartney said in 1991. “It wasn’t entirely my idea but to get us away from being The Beatles, I had this idea that we should pretend we’re this other group.”

Photo: Chris Walter / WireImage / Getty