Released: 1963
Tracks: It Won’t Be Long; All I’ve Got To Do; All My Loving; Don’t Bother Me; Little Child; Till There Was You; Please Mister Postman, Roll Over Beethoven; Hold Me Tight; You Really Got A Hold On Me; I Wanna Be Your Man; Devil in Her Heart; Not a Second Time; Money.
Best track: All My Loving, possibly Till There Was You
Track to skip: I hate to say it, but you can skip most of the songs. Worst are Little Child, Roll Over Beethoven & Hold Me Tight.
The Beatles’ second album (I’m going by the UK discography here, I HATE what Capitol did with their US releases), released before the group had even set foot in America. Since I don’t own the first album (yet) I can’t compare on how it compares to that one. Listening to this, in 2002, it seems pretty obvious that they still hadn’t really found themselves yet. A few of the songs are just incredible (All My Loving), but mostly this album isn’t that great. I do like a lot of the Beatles’ early stuff, but when they put out filler, it was REALLY bad.
One thing that’s pretty annoying is that 6 out of the 14 are covers. I know it was standard practice back at the time and the Beatles pretty much got rid of that idea, but I’d still rather sit through an album of all-Beatles material. However, judging by the bad stuff that is on this thing, maybe it was good they added the covers in. Some notable firsts on this album: It Won’t Be Long is the first instance of the “yeah’s” that would be all over their work until the end. George Harrison’s first composition, Don’t Bother Me, makes its appearance on here. The track is OK, actually one of the better ones on here. It’s got that kinda 60’s ‘spy music’ feel to it. I’m sure there’s a better name for it. Not bad at all for his first attempt at songwriting (I’m not counting Cry for A Shadow, since that was a collaboration with Lennon).
Overall, this is not an impressive album. Once they got things going (Help) then they really did become a Force. With The Beatles is just OK. The bad songs drag it down, and that’s more than half of them. Not something I’d recommend to everyone, but if you like the early stuff you probably won’t have a problem with this.
Rating: 68
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