No list of best albums is complete without a Beatles disk. I say that as someone who really didn\u2019t like the Beatles for most of my life, finally learning about and appreciating their genius over the last five years or so. (My dislike for the Beatles was perhaps the first manifestation of my contrarian side. When I was little, my parents and their friends listened to the Beatles all the time, so I got sick of them and decided I didn\u2019t like them. All the Wings albums my parents had didn\u2019t help, either. I think John would have approved. \u201cDon\u2019t like something just because someone tells you to. Find your own way, man!\u201d) But over those five years, I\u2019ve become a true fan and now count them among my five favorite bands of all-time.<\/p>\n
I know it\u2019s a real stretch listing Revolver<\/em> as my #4 favorite album. It\u2019s generally considered one of the ten greatest albums of all time. While you can make an argument that any one of five Beatles albums is their best, I think Revolver<\/em> is clearly their finest effort. It fits into the sweet spot of their career, when they were just beginning to expand their sound but had not yet dissolved into a band in name only. Where the later albums were basically collections of John, Paul, and George songs (along with a few that John would write for Ringo), Revolver<\/em> still sounds like a true group effort. The band was beginning to see just how far they could stretch things, how much freedom the studio offered, and how they could sing about more than just falling in love or being chased by teenage girls.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t hurt that Revolver<\/em> includes both my favorite Beatles song, \u201cAnd Your Bird Can Sing,\u201d and what I feel may be their most influential song, \u201cTomorrow Never Knows,\u201d which I argued awhile back is the root from which all alternative music grew. Aside from those, it includes two other great Lennon songs (\u201cI\u2019m Only Sleeping,\u201d and \u201cShe Said She Said\u201d); three great McCartney songs (\u201cEleanor Rigby,\u201d \u201cHere, There, and Everywhere,\u201d and \u201cFor No One\u201d); George Harrison\u2019s first major statement as a songwriter (\u201cTaxman\u201d); and a song custom-made for Ringo (\u201cYellow Submarine\u201d). Finally, the album shows exactly where the band members were headed in their writing over the next decade.<\/p>\n One of my favorite things to do with albums that changed music is to try to imagine the reactions of people when the album was first released. With Revolver<\/em>, I like to imagine a young girl, maybe 16 or so and deep in the grips of Beatlemania in 1966, taking the album home and placing it on her small turntable. She thought \u201cTaxman\u201d was a little strange, but her dad always complained about taxes and it was nice that her dad and the Beatles agreed on something (And who was that singing? John or George?). \u201cEleanor Rigby,\u201d \u201cHere There and Everywhere,\u201d and \u201cFor No One\u201d were beautiful. \u201cYellow Submarine\u201d was lots of fun to sing along with. \u201cAnd Your Bird Can Sing,\u201d was a bouncy little rocker. \u201cGot to Get You Into My Life,\u201d was different, but also sounded kind of mature, and the boys were growing up. And then \u201cTomorrow Never Knows.\u201d Nice girls didn\u2019t drop f-bombs back in the 60s (or at least in my little fantasy they didn\u2019t), but I imagine the girl sitting and staring at her turntable, slack-jawed, and thinking, \u201cWhat the fuck was that?\u201d and seriously considering not listening to the album again just because of it.<\/p>\n Revolver<\/em> covers an immense amount of territory, jetting off in dozens of different directions. It\u2019s remarkable that the album sounds so good when the band was exploring so many new sounds and ideas. Some of their later albums, notably the White Album, suffer from trying to cover too much ground. Revolver<\/em>, though, was the perfect statement at the perfect moment. Along with the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan, the Beatles were leading rock and pop into an exciting new age where writing music meant more than just crafting a dozen or so pop songs that lasted 3:30. Revolver<\/em> is the album that every band since has tried to equal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No list of best albums is complete without a Beatles disk. I say that as someone who really didn\u2019t like the Beatles for most of my life, finally learning about and appreciating their genius over the last five years or so. (My dislike for the Beatles was perhaps the first manifestation of my contrarian side. When I was little, my parents and their friends listened to the Beatles all the time, so I got sick of them and decided I didn\u2019t like them. All the Wings albums my parents had didn\u2019t help, either. I think John would have approved. \u201cDon\u2019t like something just because someone tells you to. Find your own way, man!\u201d) But over those five years, I\u2019ve become a true fan and now count them among my five favorite bands of all-time. I know it\u2019s a real stretch listing Revolver as my #4 favorite album. It\u2019s generally considered one of the ten greatest albums of all time. While you can make an argument that any one of five Beatles albums is their best, I think Revolver is clearly their finest effort. It fits into the sweet spot of their career, when they were just beginning to expand their sound but had not yet dissolved into a band in name only. Where the later albums were basically collections of John, Paul, and George songs (along with a few that John would write for Ringo), Revolver still sounds like a true group effort. The band was beginning to see just how far they could stretch things, how much freedom the studio offered, and how they could sing about more than just falling in love or being chased by teenage girls. It doesn\u2019t hurt that Revolver includes both my favorite Beatles song, \u201cAnd Your Bird Can Sing,\u201d and what I feel may be their most influential song, \u201cTomorrow Never Knows,\u201d which I argued awhile back is the root from which all alternative music grew. Aside from those, it includes two other great Lennon songs (\u201cI\u2019m Only Sleeping,\u201d and \u201cShe Said She Said\u201d); three great McCartney songs (\u201cEleanor Rigby,\u201d \u201cHere, There, and Everywhere,\u201d and \u201cFor No One\u201d); George Harrison\u2019s first major statement as a songwriter (\u201cTaxman\u201d); and a song custom-made for Ringo (\u201cYellow Submarine\u201d). Finally, the album shows exactly where the band members were headed in their writing over the next decade. One of my favorite things to do with albums that changed music is to try to imagine the reactions of people when the album was first released. With Revolver, I like to imagine a young girl, maybe 16 or so and deep in the grips of Beatlemania in 1966, taking the album home and placing it on her small turntable. She thought \u201cTaxman\u201d was a little strange, but her dad always complained about taxes and it was nice that her dad and the Beatles agreed on something (And who was that singing? John or George?). \u201cEleanor Rigby,\u201d \u201cHere There and Everywhere,\u201d and \u201cFor No One\u201d were beautiful. \u201cYellow Submarine\u201d was lots of fun to sing along with. \u201cAnd Your Bird Can Sing,\u201d was a bouncy little rocker. \u201cGot to Get You Into My Life,\u201d was different, but also sounded kind of mature, and the boys were growing up. And then \u201cTomorrow Never Knows.\u201d Nice girls didn\u2019t drop f-bombs back in the 60s (or at least in my little fantasy they didn\u2019t), but I imagine the girl sitting and staring at her turntable, slack-jawed, and thinking, \u201cWhat the fuck was that?\u201d and seriously considering not listening to the album again just because of it. Revolver covers an immense amount of territory, jetting off in dozens of different directions. It\u2019s remarkable that the album sounds so good when the band was exploring so many new sounds and ideas. Some of their later albums, notably the White Album, suffer from trying to cover too much ground. Revolver, though, was the perfect statement at the perfect moment. Along with the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan, the Beatles were leading rock and pop into an exciting new age where writing music meant more than just crafting a dozen or so pop songs that lasted 3:30. Revolver is the album that every band since has tried to equal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81,9],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lists","tag-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15277,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/15277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}