Released: 1964
Tracks: A Hard Day’s Night; I Should Have Known Better; If I Fell; I’m Happy Just to Dance With You; And I Love Her; Tell Me Why; Can’t Buy Me Love; Any Time At All; I’ll Cry Instead; Things We Said Today; When I Get Home; I’ll Be Back.
Best track: A Hard Day’s Night
Track to skip: I’ll Cry Instead, but it’s not that horrible
My gosh, what an improvement over the last album. I guess the burst of American fame lit a fire under their collective asses and they put out an album (soundtrack to the movie + 6 more songs) that really kicks ass. That first chord in A Hard Day’s Night is so classic. You can totally hear the excitement in their voices and their playing for the whole thing.
This is the only Beatles album that has only Lennon/McCartney songs and no one else’s. George gets to sing I’m Happy Just to Dance With You, which is decent, but it’s obvious they didn’t want George singing the best songs on the album (he gets his revenge on Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road). Ringo is relegated to playing drums only for this one.
The songwriting has significantly improved from the last two albums. They’re still only singing about girls (bleh) but the songs are better. Of course they’re still releasing their best songs as singles, but they really got it right for this album. It flows really well and it’s solid all the way through until the end. They even manage to close the album with a great song and not a clunker like they usually do.
Go get this, it’s the best of all the pre-drug albums and a great example of why they were so damn huge back in 1964.
Rating: 86
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