The recent news that a whole slew of Beatles-related movies are on the horizon can’t help but cause us to think about the films the Fab Four made when they together. They starred in three scripted movies, one documentary, and made a brief appearance at the end of an animated film (while their cartoon doppelgängers handled the rest of the action).
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Some amazing music emanated from those films. For the sake of these rankings, we’re considering the songs that ended up on the albums related to the movies, even if the songs didn’t appear in said films. Let’s count them down, from No. 5 to No. 1.
5. Yellow Submarine
In 1999, something called the Yellow Submarine Songtrack appeared, and it had the advantage of replacing George Martin‘s orchestrations with Beatle songs that appeared in the film but not the original soundtrack. This version at least gives you more stuff, but it’s a disjointed experience that comes off more like a haphazard greatest hits package. As for the original soundtrack, the four songs The Beatles included were leftovers, albeit some really good ones (especially “Hey Bulldog” and “It’s All Too Much”). In any case, it’s not a fair fight between Yellow Submarine and the other movie albums.
4. Let It Be
After completing countless hours of recording for the intended Get Back album/movie, The Beatles, in the throes of a breakup, didn’t want to bother with narrowing it down. Producer Phil Spector finally took charge (much to Paul McCartney‘s chagrin) and created a finished album (renamed Let It Be) that felt somehow overdone and underdone all at once. Regardless of the production issues, the fact remains the ratio of killers to filler was much lower when comparing the album’s songs to those from other Beatles albums of that period. McCartney’s mistake was believing that a ramshackle, improvisatory Fab Four represented the best version of the group, instead of one that meticulously got things right in the studio.
3. A Hard Day’s Night
The A Hard Day’s Night album is fascinating because of how it’s split. On the one hand, you have the songs that appeared in the film. This batch of songs represents the group at their crowd-pleasing best, with rip-roaring rockers like the title track and “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and heartfelt ballads like “If I Fell” and “And I Love Her.” The second side of the album features a moodier side of the band that really hadn’t been much in evidence to that point. Songs like “Things We Said Today” and “I’ll Be Back” showed them writing with newfound depth and subtlety. Put it all together, and you get the best of the group’s first four UK studio albums.
2. Help!
The Help! album draws a line of demarcation in the band’s career, as they left behind a lot of the puppy-love simplicity in favor of more mature themes and ambitious musical textures. The title track gave off good-time vibes music-wise, but hid an actual plea for assistance from writer John Lennon. Lennon was at a peak, what with the introspective “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” and the droning “Ticket to Ride.” George Harrison offered up his first truly great original in the ballad “I Need You.” And McCartney’s musical wanderlust was showing in the bluegrass-tinged “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and the classical music vibes of “Yesterday.” This record paved the way for the masterpieces to come, although you could argue it occupies that level pretty comfortably itself.
1. Magical Mystery Tour
Even if we don’t cheat and include the singles tacked onto the U.S. release, Magical Mystery Tour still stands pretty tall. The Beatles were taking the slice-of-life songwriting of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band into weirder, avant-garde places. “I Am the Walrus” stuns with its bold musical innovations and Lennon’s lyrical playfulness, “The Fool on the Hill” finds McCartney writing with autumnal authority, and “Blue Jay Way” demonstrates Harrison’s command of psychedelia. Now add in the big hitters on side two of the American version (which has since become the accepted version): “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” “All You Need Is Love” and “Hello, Goodbye.” It adds up to the finest pound-for-pound collection of songs on any Beatles LP.
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