One thing to note about the so-called Blue Album—beyond the quality and innovation of the music itself—is how well it manages to encapsulate a period of The Beatles that isn’t that easy to encapsulate. Part of their legacy lies in helping invent our concept of the Rock Album: a continuous, unified experience closer to a novel or film than a collection of independent songs. Albums had a logic; they might even—in the case of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or the second half of Abbey Road—have a narrative. One might even call it capital-A Art.

Of course, tracks like “A Day in the Life” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” would be astonishing in any context. And as much fun as it is to ride the contrasts of the White Album and the loose flow of Sgt. Pepper’s, the band’s late period also produced some of their best stand-alone songs, including “Don’t Let Me Down”, “The Ballad of John and Yoko” and “Hey Jude”. (This version of The Beatles 1967-1970 also includes The Beatles’ very late-period final song, “Now and Then”, which Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr began assembling in 2022 from a late-’70s John Lennon demo.)

Hardcore fans might find most of the Blue Album kind of redundant, but to anyone looking for answers to bigger questions of who The Beatles were and what cultural changes they helped set in motion (not to mention in such a short time), 1967-1970—along with its red companion, 1962-1966—is a good start. This is when the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed innocence of pop meets the premonitions of the psychedelic underground (“I Am the Walrus”) and the rock ballad tilts toward heavy metal (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”), when the fabled idealism of the late ’60s (“All You Need Is Love”) hits the chilly reality of what comes next (“Get Back”, “Revolution”). They didn’t write the story alone—but it’s hard to find another band that summarised it so well.

Tracklisting

1. Strawberry Fields Forever
2. Penny Lane
3. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
4. With A Little Help From My Friends
5. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
6. A Day In The Life
7. All You Need Is Love
8. I Am The Walrus
9. Hello Goodbye
10. The Fool On The Hill
11. Magical Mystery Tour
12. Lady Madonna
13. Hey Jude
14. Revolution
15. Back In The U.S.S.R.
16. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
17. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
18. Get Back
19. Don’t Let Me Down
20. The Ballad Of John & Yoko
21. Old Brown Shoe
22. Here Comes The Sun
23. Come Together
24. Something
25. Octopus’s Garden
26. Let It Be
27. Across The Universe
28. The Long And Winding Road
29. Now And Then
30. Blackbird
31. Dear Prudence
32. Glass Onion
33. Within You Without You
34. Hey Bulldog
35. Oh! Darling
36. I Me Mine
37. I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

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