Every Beatles Studio Album, Ranked from Worst to Best

I explore the collected works of the most famous rock band of all time.

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When I put out a call for readers to vote on the bands that would get the studio discography ranking treatment in 2026, I almost left the Beatles off the list.

I kept asking myself, “What else is there to say at this point?”

They are the biggest-selling music act of all time, with global record sales estimated at 600 million. That puts the group a cool 100 million units ahead of their closest competitors, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. If you believe the internet sleuths, the Beatles brand has generated billions, if not tens of billions, in sales.

They are rock and pop’s version of Star Wars—a franchise that has dominated the cultural conversation for so long, their legacy is about far more than just the music at this point. Could I strip all that baggage away and return to just the music?

That was the central curiosity that pushed me to dive back into their studio albums after all this time. I purchased every single one during the 2009 remaster wave and hadn’t done a comprehensive relisten since. I was still slightly skeptical, even then. Could their records still offer enough surprises to keep me engaged?

As is so often the case, what I found went far beyond my initial assumptions or expectations. Maybe you’ll have the same experience listening along with me.

Three quick notes before we get started:

1. This discography ranking covers the U.K. (Parlophone) Beatles studio album releases, as those are the ones canonized across streaming platforms and recent physical media. The one exception is the U.S. version of Magical Mystery Tour, widely regarded as the definitive document, rather than the U.K. double EP.

2. For each listen, I defaulted to the most recent stereo mixes of these albums. About half have been remastered at some point between the mid-2010s and now, while the other half dates back to 2009. For the sake of brevity, I won’t be doing extensive stereo-versus-mono comparisons, nor will I be diving into the back catalog of demos and outtakes from recent box sets and deluxe editions. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts on those in the comments.

3. The usual reminders to like, subscribe, share, and smile because you’re awesome for getting to the end of the intro.

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Let’s begin:

13. Beatles for Sale (1964)

It’s been called the Beatles’ burnout album, and, you know what, it sounds like it.

On Beatles for Sale, you can hear the exhaustion of a group grappling with the psychic cost of becoming culturally unavoidable. The vocal harmonies carry a weight that wasn’t present until that point. The arrangements are a little flat, and the playing is adequate but missing their usual sparkle. John Lennon called it the Beatles’ “Country & Western album,” though it doesn’t carry the unabashed earnestness of mid-60s albums in that genre. Instead, there’s a black hole of cynicism that slowly expands as the tracklist unfolds.

“No Reply” is the tone-setter, kicking off the record with such bitterness that it’s startling, especially if you listen to the Beatles’ studio oeuvre in chronological order. “I’m a Loser” doubles down on the pitying self-doubt, while “Baby’s in Black” turns grief into a stiff, funereal exercise. It’s an unusually bleak run of songs for a band that, at the peak of Beatlemania, were still primarily marketed as pop music saviors. That tonal weight makes the album harder to return to than its predecessors. Honesty has a cost that, in this case, diminishes momentum.

However, even under relentless release schedules and live-performance demands, the group’s songwriting stays strong. You can also hear early studio curiosity creeping in, with some interesting layered vocals, echoed drums, and arrangements that draw heavily on jazz and Motown rather than straight rock and roll (or, to counter Lennon, country music) orthodoxy. In reading interviews from the period, the band mentioned Bob Dylan as an influence, too, and you have to wonder if the cynicism was learned from a record like The Times They Are a-Changin’, even if it can’t quite pull it off as well.

Overall, Beatles for Sale is the first Beatles record where the engine sputters. A few tracks fail to lift off, and the sense of inevitability that powered earlier releases loosens its grip. The excitement feels rationed, which makes it human, not bad by any stretch. Considering the pace they were asked to maintain in the studio, it’s hard not to sympathize.

12. Help! (1965)

Like Beatles for Sale, this record feels shaped by external demands and the British pop music machine, rather than creative intent. The sequencing is rushed and performances somewhat harried. The Beatles were stretched thin, trying to wrap their arms around film commitments, non-album singles, and the near-constant travel for live shows and television appearances. You can hear the fatigue at the edges of every single track. Yet, under the hood, the music tells a more nuanced story.

Instead of leaning harder into cynicism and getting even meaner than they had in the past, the band overcorrected by masking darker feelings with pervasive brightness. The title track is anxious at its core, but it’s dressed to the nines in this unflagging major-key insistence. “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” is borderline threatening if you concentrate on the lyrics alone, yet it glides by somehow on immaculate harmonies. “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” nods openly to Dylan, signaling a widening emotional vocabulary. That overarching instinct to disguise their unease rather than confront it head-on keeps the album from fully breaking open on the relatability scale.

Historically, if A Hard Day’s Night was Lennon’s showcase, Help! might be McCartney’s. His melodic instincts improve noticeably here. “The Night Before,” “Another Girl,” and “I’ve Just Seen a Face” tumble through your speakers with such ease, leading with expertly crafted hooks. The same applies to “Yesterday,” one of the most successful (and covered) songs ever recorded, and one of the prettiest and simplest McCartney compositions ever. That single has had its detractors over the years (a list that included Dylan at one point, though he came around later), but it hardly matters whether the lyrics “mean” anything. It’s like Seinfeld. It may be about “nothing,” but the notes it hits and the chords it strikes within the average human being cannot be underestimated.

That contradiction defines Help! It’s uneven, at times wildly so, but in several cases, more ambitious than it lets on at first. Exhausted and exploratory in equal measure, it’s a perfectly fine crossroads record.

11. Yellow Submarine (1969)

My biggest question about the soundtrack for the Beatles’ 1969 animated film Yellow Submarine is this: Is calling this a Beatles album a bit of a stretch?

The reason I ask is, if you’re going in chronological order, there are only four new songs from the band on this tracklist, and only two of those, “Hey Bulldog” and “All Together Now,” were recorded specifically as single tie-ins for the film’s release. Otherwise, the Beatles’ contributions to this record were scraped together from previous sessions and albums, with the eponymous opening track dating back nearly three years before the soundtrack hit store shelves. According to multiple sources, the group was going through the motions in the studio to fulfill the last of their three-picture commitment with United Artists. Despite the film’s continued influence, the primary reason it’s not a live-action movie is that the Fab Four couldn’t be bothered to make one.

Still, I dig the quartet of new tracks the group added to the mix. I’ve always had a soft spot for the central groove in “Hey Bulldog,” one that starts with this funky piano riff by Lennon, which gives Harrison a nice foundation for some brawny rhythm guitar. “All Together Now” hints at the chant-along material McCartney would go on to produce as a solo artist, channeling his distinctive buoyancy through a simple, alluring arrangement. The unsung gem is “It’s All Too Much,” a Harrison tribute to his joyous experiences on LSD while in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the Summer of Love. Instead of sitars, a Hammond organ provides the spacy drone he had become known for with the band.

As for the Martin film score portion on the album’s flip side, it’s lovely. His compositions are lush and inviting, relying mostly on strings and brass stabs to emphasize emotional or action cues. Those familiar with classical music (certainly more than I, who had to look up the works referenced in the rest of this sentence) will catch a portion of Bach’s Air on the G String, as well as wisps of Stravinsky and Mozart. It’s light on its feet like a Disney score, but, on several occasions, carries a bit more weight, as if John Barry was scoring a James Bond stunt sequence. But, without the accompanying visuals, I think it loses some of its power, and that opinion didn’t change on a fresh listen.

Overall, it lands in this spot on the strength of the new material’s appeal, rather than as a cohesive LP, which it isn’t, really.

10. With the Beatles (1963)

This record lives in this middle ground that the band wouldn’t address until much later.

On one level, it’s an efficient follow-up to their debut, designed to keep shelves stocked while the Beatlemania tsunami gathered momentum in the distance. On another, it’s a document of a group that, even at this early stage, was quietly widening its skill set while operating within tight commercial guardrails. Through that lens, With the Beatles is a fascinating listen, reflecting a version of the music industry that no longer exists but one that molded the Beatles into pop demigods.

The reliance on covers is the clearest sign of that push-pull I alluded to. The foursome double down on the R&B material that energized Please Please Me, but this time, the approach is more measured and controlled, which is both a good and bad thing. “Please Mr. Postman” and “You Really Got a Hold on Me” are clean, affectionate, and tightly performed, yet they lack the sense of physical ecstasy that made “Twist and Shout” feel like a jailbreak. They suggest a band learning restraint, whether intentionally or not, a transformation that’s hugely important for what comes later in their discography, but it also limits this record’s replay value. Compared to Please Please Me, this one comes across as cautious. Bigger budget, better studio tech, we’d-better-not-screw-this-up kind of vibes.

Where the album truly advances the band’s story is in the original material. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting factory sounds far more assured and less dependent on sheer force of will to get their point across. That newfound confidence can be found on deeper cuts like “It Won’t Be Long” and “Hold Me Tight,” propulsive rockers that dial the swagger up several notches. “All My Loving” is in the same boat, but is far more clinical in how efficiently it delivers melody and harmony, a sign that pop craft was becoming second nature to the two men. You also have “I Wanna Be Your Man,” powered by Ringo’s vocal, which reintroduces a bit of that Cavern Club grit into the mix and, for a moment anyway, reconnects with those live-wire roots.

Overall, With the Beatles is easy to like. It intermittently captures flashes of the sweaty club energy that defined their meteoric overnight rise to prominence. But it also feels boxed in by circumstance and timing. Released between “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the album can’t help but feel overshadowed by singles that didn’t just top charts but redefined how you scale pop music stardom on both sides of the Atlantic.

As a result, this record functions best as infrastructure. Not a choice destination for a lot of casual fans, but a necessary link between arrival and explosion.

9. Please Please Me (1963)

There’s an argument to be made that this album is the most important studio debut in music history.

By the time Please Please Me was recorded in an infamous 10-hour marathon with producer George Martin in February 1963, the Beatles already had more than a few battle scars. After cycling through multiple names, lineup changes, and failed record label auditions (Decca famously said no to the group, telling manager Brian Epstein that “guitar groups are on the way out”), a September 1962 recording session at EMI Recording Studios (later Abbey Road Studios) produced their first single, “Love Me Do.” That song kickstarted the Beatles’ machine, peaking inside the Top 20 of what would become the U.K.’s official singles chart. That initial buzz led to a November session that produced, among other material, the faster, catchier version of “Please Please Me.” After hearing it, Martin told the group, “You’ve just made your first No. 1.”

On February 11, 1963, the Beatles made history. To supplement their existing A- and B-sides already in circulation, they laid down 10 new tracks. Martin later said that the recording was executed with a live-to-tape mentality, with only two tracks, “Misery” and “Baby It’s You,” requiring overdubs about a week later. On top of all that, John Lennon’s voice was nearly shot from a bad cold, forcing him to down a substantial number of lozenges just to get through it. When you consider the conditions and the make-it-or-break-it nature of the session, the quality of the material is nothing short of extraordinary. Some tracks hit that mid-60s pop sweet spot more accurately than others, but you can’t help but be sucked in by the sheer excitement in their performances.

It’s no coincidence, I think, that the album’s bookends are arguably the most kinetic tracks they ever recorded: “I Saw Her Standing There” and their cover of Bert Berns and Phil Medley’s “Twist and Shout.” But everything else in between also has an unmistakable energy. Even ballads like “Anna (Go To Him)” have a driving four-to-the-floor rhythm to them. The multiple rounds of remastering and digital touch-ups have only made these songs more compelling since their initial release. Nuances in the harmonies on “Boys,” where the vocals and drums originally shared the same mic channel, make the track much more impressive in retrospect. I know purists will split hairs over which version(s) (stereo vs. mono, as well as the bevy of outtakes now available as part of Super Deluxe reissues) of a given track is “the best” or “the definitive” one, but it’s undeniable that improvements to sound systems and recording technology have only helped solidify the Beatles’ early legacy.

A little less than a year after Please Please Me hit U.K. store shelves, the group made their game-changing appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The universe hasn’t been the same since.

8. Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

This record is a hodgepodge. I don’t mean that as an insult, more as an objective description of how it behaves from track to track, which is to say … erratically. It won’t be the last time that theme comes up in this article.

At its best, Magical Mystery Tour captures the Beatles balancing sonic experimentation with instinctive pop clarity. “Strawberry Fields Forever” remains one of their most complete studio achievements, strange without being alienating and able to resonate without turning into a lyrical sledgehammer. “Hello Goodbye” is proof that, even at their most playful, they could still write choruses that worm their way into your brain and threaten to stay indefinitely, rent-free. “I Am the Walrus” is also enjoyable in its willful opacity, though I’m still more partial to the less strung-out charm of something like “Yellow Submarine.” Maybe I’m a child at heart. Who knows …

The problem is not sound. It’s this underlying emotional distance. Several songs here feel more posed than inhabited by human beings. “Baby You’re a Rich Man” grooves nicely, but its fixation on wealth and celebrity keeps the average listener outside the song, observing the performance through the parasocial fishbowl the group was increasingly interested in staying in. It’s the kind of non-committal gesture that gets on my nerves. “All You Need Is Love” suffers from a different issue. Its message is earnest and well-intentioned, but decades of repeated plays have flattened its impact for me. What once felt open-hearted now lands closer to a slogan, its simplicity no longer carrying the same weight.

There has always been debate about whether this counts as a proper album. I’m content following this version, which was canonized by the surviving members during the early CD era. The highs are real, the filler is unavoidable, and the uneven final product needs to be accepted with both of those aspects in mind. I’m glad it exists. I’m also comfortable saying that it’s not required listening in the larger Beatles canon unless you’re a completist or seeking a vehicle for the aforementioned hit singles.

7. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

If you want to draw a line in the sand at Rubber Soul and call everything before that album the Beatles’ “early work,” then A Hard Day’s Night is, for me, the best of that group.

Artistically, several lightbulbs go off at once for the group, Martin, and Epstein. Gone are the covers and insistence on conforming to increasingly outdated pop-rock norms of the era. For the first time, the tracklist consists of all originals, showcasing Lennon-McCartney’s confidence in taking that next step and becoming their generation’s most influential songwriting duo. Each track also sounds much sleeker and more modern compared to their previous two albums, signaling an interest in studio experimentation that would continue throughout their historic run on the pop charts. Between the famous augmented G chord that opens the LP and the gleaming, pristine sound of their harmonies, the Beatles truly were popularizing a new sound in real time. It’s a charming, meticulous, and relentlessly energetic blueprint that’s been endlessly imitated but rarely equalled in quality.

Songs like “If I Fell” and “Tell Me Why” are airtight performances and among the best-sung numbers in the group’s history. Harrison’s vocal turn on “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You” plays like a coming-out party for his abilities as a frontman. And, on top of all that, A Hard Day’s Night might be the peak of John Lennon as a Beatle. He’s sharp, elastic, and emotionally legible in a way that powered the group’s image as teen idols. “I Should Have Known Better” and “When I Get Home” snap with this uncanny charisma that nearly boils over into his later brand of paranoia, while “And I Love Her” and “I’ll Be Back” are examples of how good he was at pulling male vulnerability into a pop frame without watering it down to the point of tedium. Despite the cruel, chauvinist demeanor he had in his personal life, Lennon sure put on an exceptional front as an infinitely appealing pop star.

By 1964, the Fab Four were no longer in reactionary mode. They were, arguably for the first time, in complete control behind the wheel of Beatlemania, a vehicle that has gained unprecedented commercial momentum with no off-ramp in sight. What’s wild, reading accounts from the time, is how quickly all of this happened. Liverpool to London, London to the U.S., record-breaking TV appearances, then straight back into the studio to cut songs for a feature film. All in less than two years. No stopping to admire the spoils of their labor. Just unadulterated forward momentum.

6. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

I know I will get some heat for this, but it’s the truth: I don’t think Sgt. Pepper is a masterpiece.

It’s a very good album. On a few occasions, it’s positively breathtaking. But taken as a full, end-to-end statement, it’s weighed down by too many moments that, today, sound repetitive or half-baked. Those bits are what prevent me from justifying its reputation as the untouchable crown jewel of the Beatles’ catalog.

Even with that, the highs are undeniable. “With a Little Help From My Friends” is one of their gentlest, warmest melodic frameworks, featuring the most endearing vocal performance Ringo ever contributed to the group’s canon. It works because the harmonies never crowd him, and the arrangement never winks at the listener. That sincerity carries the performance. “A Day in the Life” remains a masterclass in controlled chaos, where Lennon’s detached verses collide with those famously manic interludes before dissolving into one of the most famous closing chords in pop. There’s also “Within You Without You,” my favorite track here and one of George Harrison’s finest-ever works. It’s as fully realized, patient, and emotionally grounded a meditation as you’d want from an album that shoots for an otherworldly experience. When the strings and sitars begin a call-and-response midway through, the song opens outward and becomes the LP’s most transportive spiritual moment.

Where Sgt. Pepper falters isn’t in its ambition, but, oddly enough, for a band and production team as meticulous as they were, in its execution. “Getting Better” and “Fixing a Hole” are bright explorations of darker themes (including Lennon’s history of domestic abuse), but because they use a similar structure and are sequenced one after another, they dilute their respective impact rather than amplify it. “She’s Leaving Home” has undeniable “let’s run it back” energy, aiming for pathos but settling for saccharine sentiment, sanding down the observational sharpness that made “Eleanor Rigby” so incredible. “Good Morning Good Morning” pushes a crowded vocal arrangement into this abrasive register that feels, for lack of a better word, kind of shrill and careless (by the band’s standards, anyway). These songs do not fail so much as interrupt momentum, creating this stop-start pacing that never quite coalesces in the right ways.

Historically, the album’s impact is undeniable. Even if it did not invent every tool it used, Sgt. Pepper brought studio maximalism and conceptual misdirection into the mainstream. It also arrived at a moment when the Beatles very much needed a public reset. The backlash surrounding the butcher cover and Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” comment had put a few dents in their image, especially in the U.S., and this record helped redirect the narrative. All of that matters. The innovation matters. The moments of beauty absolutely matter and more than earn their place among the decade’s most beloved artistic achievements. But this ranking exercise is, as I said in the intro, about stripping away as much mythology as possible and sitting with the record as a collection of songs first and foremost. On that level, the gaps are hard to ignore. As an LP, it doesn’t hold up as consistently as the records that follow it chronologically.

5. Let It Be (1970)

I’ve always thought it fitting that the final Beatles studio album, made up of material recorded before the sessions that produced Abbey Road, was titled Let It Be. By the time it was released in May 1970, the four men were clearly finished with the band. Finished with the scrutiny. Finished with the pressure attached to living up to the Beatles’ brand name. And, most importantly, finished working with each other.

Divergent ambitions, musical priorities, and romantic relationships had fractured whatever remained of their working dynamic. Apple Corps executive Peter Brown described the atmosphere as “hostile lethargy,” which, based on other eyewitness accounts, fits the bill. Lennon operated at a distance. McCartney was accused of being overbearing. Harrison wanted more room and briefly quit after a heated confrontation in the studio. As the footage from those sessions makes painfully clear, being forced to collaborate with people you no longer trust, under constant observation, doesn’t exactly bring out the best in anyone.

Compounding that tension was the band’s own dissatisfaction with the material. Abbey Road only exists because McCartney pushed hard for a do-over, a return to discipline and structure under George Martin’s guidance. That decision leaves Let It Be in a strange position within the catalog. There’s no overarching vision tying the songs together, no major technical breakthroughs, no sense of a band chasing new terrain. Instead, it plays like a throwback. A looser collection of songs, assembled rather than sculpted. And yet, even under those circumstances, the quality of the writing is a reminder of how formidable the Beatles were, both collectively and as individuals.

You can argue about the quality of Phil Spector’s involvement in shaping the final tracks all day (and people have), but his instinct to lean into grandeur really works. The orchestral treatment on “I Me Mine” and “The Long and Winding Road” gives those songs a sense of scale they might otherwise lack. Stripped down, they risk feeling unfinished. With the added heft, they’ve become transcendent. There’s also a pronounced soulfulness running through the album. “Let It Be” carries a quasi-gospel calm that feels earned rather than affected, and “Dig a Pony” taps back into the band’s gritty R&B roots. You can hear a path not taken here. If the Beatles had lasted another few years, it’s not hard to imagine them circling back toward that tradition, maybe even arriving at something stylistically akin to David Bowie’s Young Americans.

Let It Be has always lived under the shadow of the breakup, and for years, that context distorted how it was heard. With time and distance, the record plays differently. Less as a document of collapse and more as a weary, uneven, but sincere coda. It’s complicated. It’s imperfect. As endings go, it’s more satisfying than it has any right to be.

4. The Beatles (White Album) (November 22, 1968)

This album was made while the band was actively coming apart at the seams. Arguments over which songs deserved space were constant. Wives and girlfriends were present in the studio, breaking a long-standing rule and altering the atmosphere permanently. Sessions were abandoned midstream. Egos were bruised. Fits were thrown. Ringo even quit temporarily. And yet, the record survives. In several places, it thrives.

The reality is there’s no shortage of great material on the White album, even if you have to push through a bloated tracklist to find it. When a song or sequence hits, it packs a wallop. “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and “Helter Skelter” are some of the most bruising stretches in the Beatles’ catalog, giving rise to nascent hard rock and heavy metal movements that would soon follow in their footsteps. “Helter Skelter” is the most memorable of that bunch, with a build to the first verse, punctuated by a primal scream, that still sounds positively spine-tingling. In the pantheon of tracks written about playground slides, it’s got to be one of the coolest, right?

At the opposite end of the spectrum are Paul’s quieter moments, which are just as essential. “Martha My Dear,” “I Will,” and “Blackbird” are among his most tender songs, stripped of any maudlin spectacle and anchored in earnest, naked melody. They feel intimate in a way that Beatles songs rarely did before. It makes me wonder what a fully acoustic, MTV Unplugged-style album would’ve sounded like had they set the charts on fire a couple of decades later. McCartney’s contributions contain multitudes and are by far the most interesting creative voice operating in this tracklist. The pendulum swings in the opposite direction on “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road,” which is all unruly nerve and completely unconcerned with the polish he exhibits with his softer side.

Not all of the excess pays off. Both versions of “Revolution” drift into indulgence compared to the band’s sharper single version. “Bungalow Bill” and “Yer Blues” feel like rare miscalculations from Lennon at a time when his songwriting instincts were otherwise sharpening quickly. These tracks do not ruin the album, but they did test my patience this time around, especially when encountered in sequence. I get that the sprawl is intentional to a degree, but it’s also not frictionless. This double LP demands work from the listener. There’s a micro-legacy it’s left in its wake where you’re kind of obligated to return to it, rearrange it mentally, forgive its contradictions, and construct a more streamlined version of your own accord, if for nothing else but more cohesion. Not unlike The Wall, that it holds together at all feels miraculous, given that it is essentially four solo records fighting over the same oxygen.

If you have that level of patience to give the White album, it will reward that curiosity and dedication. I don’t think it’s as kind to casual listening, unfortunately. The hits stand above the B and C-level material, and for good reason. Even the gambles mostly pay off, despite the fact that there’s too much of it. The best material cuts right to the heart of what made the Beatles so exhilarating to listen to. It is not their most focused work, but it might be the most pleasurable to untangle.

3. Rubber Soul (1965)

For a long time, Rubber Soul was my favorite Beatles record.

When I first heard it as a teenager, it felt like the perfect nexus of everything I liked about their sound. It had this effortless pop appeal, as heard in the opener, “Drive My Car,” which is my favorite Beatles song of all time. But, aside from its catchy, toe-tapper nature, it was also a more serious, adult-sounding version of their persona. Granted, I hadn’t fully dipped my toes into the late-career excellence of their later work, other than what I had heard on the radio, a fact that colored my initial reaction to it. Bottom line is, at first blush, I adored Rubber Soul. Revisiting it more than two decades after that moment, my understanding of emotional response to it is more complicated. I still love it, but, in the same way that your food palette becomes more expansive and refined the older you get, I can’t say I love it as much or in the same way.

What hasn’t changed is how highly I regard the songwriting throughout this tracklist. These are still largely love songs, but they’re textured with doubt, memory, and self-awareness. “Girl” drifts through longing without resolution. “In My Life” treats nostalgia as something tender but ultimately unreliable. Overall, there’s a quiet desperation that permeates the themes and questions posed by the lyrics, striking this delicate balance that the group never quite got to again in their time together. After Rubber Soul, experimentation and maximalism became the dueling priorities, for better and for worse, when it comes to the per-song quality batting average. Here, the Beatles were still operating on a smaller scale, even with plenty of breaks from their existing persona folded into this tracklist.

One of those was the instruments used. Harrison pushes hardest against the old template, threading sitar into “Norwegian Wood” and channeling West Coast folk-rock on “If I Needed Someone.” These choices aren’t ornamental, but rather a renewed drive from a band that was ramping up its testing of how far they could stretch their sound before it snapped clean off. Thankfully, I don’t think they ever got there, though it would be a few years before they got anywhere near that line. If you’re talking individual contributions, McCartney recedes slightly into the background here, ceding the flashier moments to Lennon and Harrison. Ringo’s drumming, something I haven’t talked much about yet, also sounds particularly assured, with several grooves and fills falling squarely into the deceptively difficult category (or, at least that was my takeaway when I tried to replicate them when I bought my first drum kit).

The challenge with Rubber Soul in a ranking like this is death by comparison. Set alongside the catalogs of most British Invasion peers, it would likely stand as their crowning achievement. It’s tight, efficient, and exploratory without drifting into indulgence or sonic excess. But the Beatles were about to release records that would further redefine the pop music landscape a few more times. That doesn’t diminish Rubber Soul outright, but it does clarify its place as a near-perfect record rather than a perfect one.

Don’t worry, though—we’ve got a couple of 10/10s next.

2. Abbey Road (1969)

Do I really need to explain why this album lands where it does?

It’s universally hailed as a rock classic for a reason, and not in the vague, consensus-driven way that tends to flatten discussion online. Abbey Road more than earns its reputation every time you put it on, starting with how flat-out incredible it sounds. If not their best work, period, it’s the best-produced album the Beatles ever released. Every element in the mix has space to breathe. Nothing crowds the frame. The low end is warm and muscular when it needs to be, without ever getting muddied. The guitars are sharp without slicing through the surrounding rhythm section. Vocals sit exactly where they should, present but never overpowering. The most recent digital remasters from 2019 only underline how timeless these recordings are. If there’s a single Beatles album that justifies buying yet another physical copy for sound quality alone (I had the pleasure of hearing the most recent version on vinyl, too, and it’s impeccably done), it’s this one. It envelopes you from the first second to the last.

Of all the individual moments and who shines when, I want to take a second to acknowledge how excellent George Harrison is here. Finally operating on something resembling equal footing, his ascent here as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter doesn’t come across as a struggle. He’s precise and expressive without grandstanding. Vocally, he sounds settled and assured, backed by lyrics that have never been better. “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” have transcended beyond the point where they’re simply standout tracks. They’re the emotional anchors for the entire record, sitting comfortably alongside Lennon-McCartney contributions (also exceptional, as it happens) without feeling like exceptions. Harrison would go on to expand his artistic palette considerably post-Beatles, but I don’t think he ever got back to the subtle, lovelorn heights he reaches here.

And then you have the medley that takes up nearly the entire second side.

Running over 15 minutes, it’s far more than a clever structural trick or a way to stitch together unfinished ideas. It works because it understands pacing, tension, and release better than almost anything else released in that decade. “Golden Slumbers” through “The End” feels like a band consciously shaping its own final curtain call, even if they weren’t ready to publicly admit it yet. Themes recur. Melodies echo. The emotional arc feels intentional rather than sentimental. It’s indulgent in the best sense, generous with its multiple payoffs, and confident enough to let fragments feel complete. In those final moments (”And in the end/The love you give […]), you feel the lump rise in your throat. Every single time.

What makes Abbey Road special is the resolution. McCartney’s stated goal when he urged the band and Martin to get back in the studio for another crack at a proper swan song was to make a record “the way we used to do it.” They did that, but with all the experience and maturity that the previous two years of growing pains had forced them to get through. That scar tissue made them more focused and, in a weird way, more unified-sounding in the final product. Against all odds, the Beatles went out sounding like a band in control of its craft. That alone would’ve been enough. On top of that, they gave us one of the most satisfying albums in popular music history.

1. Revolver (1966)

The reason Revolver gets the nod over Abbey Road is that it’s more than a perfect collection of pop and rock songs. It literally invented new forms for weaving musical perfection. For millions of listeners, it didn’t sound like anything the Beatles had done before, and, for more recent legions of fans, it still, more than 60 (!) years later, sounds like it’s from another planet altogether.

And what state were the Fab Four in when they created such brilliance out of thin air? Based on my research rabbit hole, they were harboring and increasing distaste for the punishing schedule their professional obligations had forced them into. It led the group to veto manager Brian Epstein’s plan for another film and soundtrack tie-in during the first half of 1966. With an unplanned three-month break, they had ample time to immerse themselves in London’s underground art scene and, arguably more important for the textures you hear on the record, its drug culture, with everyone except McCartney partaking in LSD. You could argue that they chased the heightened perception they experienced on hallucinogens for the rest of their stint as a band.

It also helped, oddly, that Martin had resigned from his salaried post at EMI, formed his own production company, and used his (along with the group’s) newfound clout to run up an unprecedented tab at what is now Abbey Road Studios. The five men spent over 220 hours recording Revolver (that doesn’t count mixing and mastering, by the way), in large part because they had no intention of ever playing any of these songs live. Instead, they took advantage of the latest recording technology, including automatic double-tracking, reversed tape loops, shaking the foundations of song construction conventions in the process. It’s not hyperbole to say Revolver has rubbed off on hundreds of subgenres, ranging from prog rock to acid house, from a technical perspective.

It’s hard not to marvel at how effortlessly everything clicks into place sonically, even with the diverging tastes and personas of each member. Harrison leaned more into politics and philosophy, highlighted by the scathing opener “Taxman” and the gorgeous mysticism of “Love You To,” respectively. McCartney’s understated songwriting blossoms into extraordinary moments of sentimentality, like on “For No One,” “Got to Get You Into My Life,” and the groundbreaking “Eleanor Rigby,” which features a double-string quartet as the only instrumental backing. Most of Lennon’s contributions focus on his drug-fueled paranoia on tracks like “She Said She Said” and “Doctor Robert.” Even Ringo gets a nice moment to shine with “Yellow Submarine,” which is catchy as hell and should not be dismissed as a nursery rhyme. I don’t care what the haters say.

The song most emblematic of Revolver’s greatness is the closer, “Tomorrow Never Knows.” It’s swirling, at times frightening, musique concrète construction captures more than just the feeling of being on a crazy acid trip. It’s a snapshot of the most famous rock band of all time, operating with an abundance of uninhibited confidence. To be that experimental in the studio, to the point where they were inventing equipment as they were creating these soundscapes, and execute their vision with such precision is nothing short of remarkable. We take that for granted now, with the average person possessing enough mobile computing power to potentially make a song from start to finish on a phone. Back then, it was far from that easy, which makes this LP all the more impressive an achievement.

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Let’s hear it: Which rankings do you agree with and which ones would you change? Let me know in the comments.