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I never understood why Beatles For Sale gets such bad press compared to all the other Beatles albums. Maybe it’s kind of depressing in the lyrical department. "No Reply", "Baby's In Black” and "I'm a Loser” deal with heartbreak, rejection and general misery, which is hardly what the Beatlemaniacs must have been expecting given the bounce of The Beatles previous material.
For example according to All Music Guide Ritchie Unterberger who knows a lot about Folk Rock says "I'm a Loser" is also notable for being perhaps the first Beatles song to directly reflect the influence of Bob Dylan, thus nudging folk and rock a little closer together toward the folk-rock explosion of the following year. "I Don't Want To Spoil the Party" is a folksy/country and polished standout, when most of their peers like the Rolling Stones were clearly were more influenced by blues and R & B up to the middle to late 60's. "What You're Doing" features a cyclical drum- jangle guitar pattern ahead of it's time and also anticipates Roger McGuinn 12 sting sound of the Byrds. “Baby's In Black” is entirely in a dark, winding two-part harmony. “Every Little Thing” featuring all of Rubber Soul period's stylistic hallmarks: folk-rock guitars, a fadeout instead of an ending, and unusual instrumentation -- in this case tympani drums, which Ringo added
Yes it’s cover laden though “Words Of Love’ and “Rock and Roll Music” are great covers. The originals are great and revelatory into the sounds of certain bands in 1965.
Well, as a french, I can't really judge music by the lyrics for non-french language albums, but as such, I can think of a few factors:
- the fact that it comes after "A Hard Day's Night", in a way the most acclaimed OST of all time, alongside "Purple Rain"
- the sound has not changed much since the first album (although I admit that "Eight Days a Week" is awesome)
- by then, the british invasion was already spreading fast? I don't really know, I think it really started with the Who and the Rolling Stones the following year, but I may be wrong. In France, we began to have artists mimicking the "british invasion" sound with success only two years or so later (Jacques Dutronc; Johnny Hallyday) but I don't know how fast it came in other countries.
That was my two cents.
Shouldn't this discussion be under the "general music discussion" thread?
In my mind, Beatles for Sale is their weakest album (with the exception of the misguided Yellow Submarine soundtrack). I'll try to explain my reasoning. The early Beatles albums, while certainly good, are vastly inferior to their work on Rubber Soul, and everything after Rubber Soul. While the post- Rubber Soul albums work best as cohesive statements, their best early albums are the ones with the best songs on them. On Please Please Me you have songs such as Please Please Me, I Saw Her Standing There, and Twist and Shout, all of which are better than anything on Beatles for Sale. On A Hard Day's Night there's A Hard Day's Night, I Should Have Known Better, and Can't Buy Me Love, and on Help! you've got Help!, Yesterday, and Ticket to Ride. It's really a matter of which album has the highest highs, instead of which songs work best in the context of the album as a whole (which is how I judge every post-1965 album) The early albums (pre-1965) were made to be entirely different than the format of albums we now know and love. You'll notice I've left With The Beatles out of my discussion. This is because it is only slightly better than Beatles for Sale in my opinion, and not a full leap ahead like their other 3 early albums (Please Please Me, A Hard Day's Night, Help!).
I think one reason for the relatively low level of acclaim for Beatles for Sale is the fact that it was a bit of a regression - its predecessor, A Hard Day's Night, was a huge leap forward in that it was their first album comprised entirely of original songs (all Lennon/McCartney, to boot), while BFS returns to the first two albums' pattern of a smattering of originals mixed with covers. It doesn't help that, with the exception of a lovely take on Buddy Holly's "Words of Love," the covers are pretty much uniformly inferior to the ones on the first two LPs, with "Mr. Moonlight" in particular often singled out as possibly the worst track the Beatles ever released.
I think the album gets a bad rap, though. The album's originals are as follows:
No Reply
I'm a Loser
Baby's in Black
I'll Follow the Sun
Eight Days a Week
Every Little Thing
I Don't Want to Spoil the Party
What You're Doing
Song for song, can anyone really say that this group doesn't stand up alongside the Lennon/McCartney songs from ANY of the other pre-Rubber Soul albums? I don't think so. There's no reason BFS shouldn't be ranked just as high as, say, Please Please Me or even Help! (which, in my opinion, has a couple of John and Paul's weakest songs).
I'm guilty of denouncing BFS in the past, but over the past few years I've come to realize just how little it deserves such treatment.
Seeing that list of originals... yeah, that's a pretty solid group. And if there's such thing as a hidden gem of the Beatles catalog, it's gotta be "What You're Doing".
Not their weakest. With the Beatles is definitely behind it, and to be honest, I’d rather listen to BFS than to Help! Its problem is that it’s not as carefully put together as, well, ANY of their other original albums; it was a rush job, and it would be interesting to tinker with the running order to try to make it more coherent. “No Reply,” “I’m a Loser,” “Every Little Thing,” and “What You’re Doing” are just fantastic songs.
The “Beatles-Invented-Everything” crowd, of course, would argue that BFS was the LP on which they invented country music, and although that assertion is—what’s the word? oh yeah—crazy, it certainly contains their highest proportion of countryesque songs (although there was more to come on Help! and even Rubber Soul).
The perception that BFS “regressed” to previous albums by including cover filler is a little misleading. From 1963-65 they were ALWAYS recording covers, partly so they’d have enough material to fill out all the albums the record company was demanding, partly because they were easy enough to crank out despite an absolutely punishing schedule of touring.
(In fact, the previous album, A Hard Day’s Night, originally WAS supposed to include a few covers, but John and Paul wrote so many great songs that their covers from those sessions ended up on the Long Tall Sally EP.)
And on the whole, the covers on BFS are of a very high standard…except of course for “Mr. Moonlight,” the first (but, sadly, not the last) Beatles song which is just about unlistenable.
For Sale is the start of the period of the Beatles I love the most so I love it. IMO, Please Please Me or Yellow Submarine is their weakest but it's the Beatles and weak is an overstatement.
Beatles for Sale is, in my opinion, the most underrated Beatles album, and I think that Please Please Me is their worst album.
Hey, Nelson (and other BFS fans) you can still vote for the album on the 1962-1964 poll. Only one vote for that album so far (John's ). Les than a week for the deadline.
By the way, count me with the ones that think it's the second weakest album by the Fab Four (after "Yellow Submarine"), which is no such bad thing coming from a band with that astonishing discography.
George Martin's side of "Yellow Submarine" may not make sense as Beatles music, but I like it quite a bit. I'd say that "Yellow Submarine" is at least as good as "Beatles For Sale" or "With The Beatles". I seem to be alone in this opinion.
I didn’t even consider Yellow Submarine, which doesn’t seem to me to be a proper Beatles album. But it’s in the 2001-monolith remastered set in my living room, so I guess I should. Here, spun as usual off the top of my head, is my preference order:
1. Revolver
2. Abbey Road
3. Sgt. Pepper
4. A Hard Day’s Night
5. Rubber Soul
6. Magical Mystery Tour (American version; the British double-EP would be at about #10)
7. White Album
8. Let It Be
9. Beatles for Sale
10. Please Please Me
11. Help!
12. With the Beatles
13. Yellow Submarine (sorry, Henrik—George Martin’s side is very effective film music, but an album that’s half Beatles studio rejects and half not-Beatles is up against stiff competition here.)
While we're on the subject, here's mine:
(1) The Beatles (White Album)
(2) Rubber Soul
(3) Revolver
(4) Magical Mystery Tour
(5) Abbey Road
(6) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
(7) Let It Be
(8) Help!
(9) A Hard Day's Night
(10) Beatles For Sale
(11) With The Beatles
(12) Yellow Submarine
(13) Please Please Me
"The Beatles '65" was the first album I ever bought (in the '70's). I wore the hell out of that album. Still love it.
1. Revolver
2. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
3. The Beatles ("The White Album")
4. Abbey Road
5. Rubber Soul
6. A Hard Day's Night
7. Let it Be
8. Please Please Me
9. Help!
10. Magical Mystery Tour
11. With the Beatles
12. Beatles for Sale
13. Yellow Submarine
1. The Beatles ("The White Album")
2. Abbey Road
3. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
4. (tie) A Hard Day's Night
4. (tie) Rubber Soul
4. (tie) Revolver
7. Magical Mystery Tour
8. Help!
9. Please Please Me
10. Let it Be
11. Yellow Submarine
12. With the Beatles
13. Beatles for Sale
1. Revolver
2. The Beatles ("The White Album")
3. Abbey Road
4. Rubber Soul
5. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
6. A Hard Day's Night
7. With the Beatles
8. Beatles for Sale
9. Help!
10. Magical Mystery Tour
11. Please Please Me
12. Let It Be
13. Yellow Submarine
1. Revolver (8.5/10)
2. Abbey Road (8.5/10)
3. Rubber Soul (8.0/10)
4. Magical Mystery Tour [US Version] (8.0/10)
5. Beatles for Sale (7.5/10)
6. The Beatles ("The White Album") (7.5/10)
7. A Hard Day’s Night (7.5/10)
8. Let It Be (7.0/10)
9. Yellow Submarine (6.5/10)
10. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (6.5/10)
11. With the Beatles (6.5/10)
12. Please Please Me (6.0/10)
13. Help! (5.0/10)
Never really tried this before I think. The first 4 are good albums and ordered properly, after that it gets a little fuzzy in the middle.. 5-8 are okay and could switch on any given day but they're not even close to my top 350 so it doesn't really matter. 9-12 I don't like and they could also switch. "Help!" is definitely last as there are at least 3 or 4 songs on there I absolutely cannot stand.
Edit: That also answers your question: no, far from it.
Edit #2: Added some ratings.
*joining the club*
1. Revolver
2. Abbey Road
3. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
4. Rubber Soul
5. The Beatles (White Album)
6. A Hard Days Night
7. Magical Mystery Tour
8. Please Please Me
9. Let it Be
10. Help!
11. Beatles for Sale
12. With the Beatles
13. Yellow Submarine
Love the first six, and really enjoy 7-12.
Beatles For Sale and Let It Be are their weakest albums. I'm not including the non-official albums (like Yellow Submarine's soundtrack and the American releases of the pre-Sgt. Pepper records).
However, that doesn't mean they are weak albums. The Beatles did not release any clunkers. Calling those two their weakest is like saying, I don't know, that Closer is Joy Division's weakest album. The fact is I still listen to Beatles For Sale and Let It Be regularly.
Someone above said one of For Sale's weaknesses was that it wasn't much of a sonic progression from their last record. I beg to differ. I think Beatles For Sale was the largest album-to-album progression of their first five releases! It was much more jaded and folk-y than their first three, and looked forward to Help! and Rubber Soul.
Quite honestly, the only reason Beatles For Sale is relatively weak for me is "Mr. Moonlight." Otherwise it's a bonafide masterpiece rather than "very, very good."
My approach -- average # of plays per song:
1. Magical Mystery Tour
2. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
3. Revolver
4. A Hard Days Night
5. Please Please Me
6. Help!
7. Beatles for Sale
8. Let it Be
9. Abbey Road
10. The Beatles (White Album)
11. Rubber Soul
12. With the Beatles
13. Yellow Submarine
If anyone's curious, the range is from 10 (YS) to 87 (MMT).
Let It Be is WAY overrated here - IMO in the bottom 2 or 3 albums they did...
1. Rubber Soul 5 stars
2. Help! 5 stars
3. Revolver 5 stars
4. With the Beatles 5 stars
5. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band 5 stars
7. Abbey Road 5 stars
8. Magical Mystery Tour 5 stars
9. A Hard Days Night 4.5 stars
10. White Album 4.5 stars
11. Beatles For Sale 4 stars
11. Let it Be 3.5 stars
12. Please Please Me 3 stars
13. Yellow Submarine 3 stars
1. White Album
2. Revolver
3. Rubber Soul
4. Abbey Road
5. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
6. Magical Mystery Tour
7. A Hard Days Night
8. Let it Be
9. Help!
10. With the Beatles
11. Please Please Me
12 Beatles For Sale
13. Yellow Submarine
Of the eleven Beatles albums originally intended to be released as LPs, I see this as the second weakest ahead of Let It Be. As an album, I actually think it's better thought out than any Beatles effort before it. Please Please Me and With the Beatles/Meet the Beatles! just generally showcase their talent and songwriting ability, and A Hard Day's Night has the great soundtrack songs on Side 1 but goes off on an slightly unexpected folk/country tangent on Side 2, which perhaps indicated The Beatles' direction on thier next LP. But Beatles for Sale is a complete album from start to finish, with the same tone and rough concept running through almost every song, certainly in the originals.
The main reason I would rank it so low is that although it does contain some classics among the originals, the quality of the covers is not as good as on previous Beatles albums (with the exception of Mr Moonlight) and what is more, the albums competing for it in The Beatles' all time rankings simply have more good songs, many of which are better than those on Beatles for Sale. Help!, for example, has You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, I Need You, You're Going to Lose That Girl and Yesterday aside from the title track and the brilliant single Ticket to Ride; Please Please Me has I Saw Her Standing There, Do You Want to Know a Secret and There's a Place as well as the title track and Love Me Do; Pepper (yes, I do conisder Pepper closer to Beatles for Sale than to Rubber Soul and Revolver) has Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Getting Better, She's Leaving Home and A Day in the Life, meaning that although I'd probably prefer to listen to Beatles for Sale all the way through, Pepper just can't be ignored.
1. White Album
2. Abbey Road
3. Revolver
4. Magical Mystery Tour
5. Rubber Soul
6. Help!
7. Please Please Me
8. A Hard Days Night
9. Beatles For Sale
10. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
11. With the Beatles
12. Let it Be
13. Yellow Submarine
Well, when I began listening to The Beatles, back in 06, I went through their catalog following the chronological order. The first 3 albums were total deceptions for me! I think I was able to listen to each one only 1-2 times, given the awfulness I found on their listens. Then, with their 4th album, I realized I was approaching the interesting part of their career. The folky tone valorized more their qualities as composers and singers, while in the previous albums that dated production, destined to make instant hits, used to transform the tracks in totally fool songs. Also, it's much more varied than their last discs. But of course all this would lead to nothing if it wasn't for the good set of songs: No Reply, Baby's in Black, Every Little Thing, Eight Days a Week, I'm a Loser. And the covers are very underrated, specially Rock'n'Roll Music and, maybe my favorite track, Kansas City-Hey, Hey, Hey. I spent almost a month listening to this disc until I advanced to Help. Well, nowadays I like their other early works also, but For Sale is clearly above the rest.
Do you want a bad album from them? Well, that's Please, Please Me! I think it's been a classic only for being the first album be the fabs. Besides Twist and Shout and a half dozen other decent tracks, everything is filler in that album.
1) The Beatles (White Album)
2) Magical Mystery Tour
3) Revolver
4) Rubber Soul
5) Let it Be
6) Beatles for Sale
7) Abbey Road
8) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
9) With the Beatles
10) A Hard Day's Night
11) Help!
12) Yellow Submarine
13) Please, Please Me
5-7 are very close
Hadn’t planned to do this, but with 12 lists, I just thought I’d put together the consensus:
1. Revolver
2. White Album
3. Abbey Road
4. Rubber Soul
5. Sgt. Pepper
6. Magical Mystery Tour
7. A Hard Day’s Night
8. Let It Be
9. Help!
10. Beatles for Sale
11. Please Please Me
12. With the Beatles
13. Yellow Submarine
#1 “VOTES”: Revolver 5, White Album 5, Rubber Soul 1, Magical Mystery Tour 1.
And, since this thread is actually about their WEAKEST album:
LAST PLACE “VOTES”: Yellow Submarine 8, Please Please Me 2, Beatles for Sale 1, Help! 1
(LAST PLACE “VOTES” if Yellow Submarine is left out: With the Beatles 3, Please Please Me 3, Beatles for Sale 3, Let It Be 2, Help! 1)
Beatles For Sale is sweet. Seriously.
I concur. The Beatles for Sale is not their weakest album. Their first two albums would rank below BFS. Please Please Me is their weakest offering, despite having three standout tracks in "Twist and Shout," "I Saw Her Standing There," and the title track. With the Beatles has nothing to match the songs that bookend PPM, but it is a more consistent effort, with only one true dog ("Devil in Her Heart").
01. The White Album (5 stars)
02. Revolver (5 stars)
03. Abbey Road (5 stars)
04. Rubber Soul (5 stars)
05. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (5 stars)
06. A Hard Day's Night (5 stars)
07. Magical Mystery Tour (5 stars)
08. Please Please Me (5 stars...really more like 4.75)
09. Help! (4.5 stars)
10. Let it Be (4.5 stars)
11. Beatles For Sale (4.5 stars)
12. With The Beatles (4.5 stars)
The top 5 all make my top 20...AHDN and MMT make my top 100...PPM probably top 200. All 12 are in my top 500.