4 Beatles Albums That Start and Finish Extremely Strong

If you start strong and finish strong, folks often overlook any issues you might have in the middle. The Beatles didn’t include a lot of filler on their records, so getting the first and last songs right wasn’t quite as paramount for them.

Yet they still managed to pull off that feat with impressive regularity in their career. These four LPs made the most impact in terms of the bookend songs.

‘Please Please Me’

The Beatles weren’t thinking about how Please Please Me might change the way people viewed rock albums. They had all of one night to finish the thing, after all. Their main strategy, promoted by producer George Martin, was to sequence it as if they were playing one of their live shows. Hence, the album started and finished with crowd-pleasers. “I Saw Her Standing There” breathlessly captures the whooshing possibility of young romance. And “Twist And Shout” sends everyone home breathless (and hoarse) from singing along to John Lennon’s bravura vocal.

‘Revolver’

As they did on Please Please Me, The Beatles started Revolver with a count-in. Only this one is a little strange, with George Harrison doing the honors in somewhat off-kilter fashion. It was the perfect way to start an album that would smash preconceived notions of Fab Four music. That count-in led to “Taxman”, a Harrison original, which was surprising in and of itself. Equally surprising was the fact that Harrison was willing to do a little protesting on the song. But the shock really set in on the closing track “Tomorrow Never Knows”. John Lennon’s masterful drone of a song set the bar for both studio experimentation and psychedelic lyrical content.

‘Abbey Road’

We know what you’re going to say. “Her Majesty” is officially the last track on Abbey Road. But that postage stamp of a song resembles an epilogue more than a closer. No, the true final word on Abbey Road comes via the final chunk of the Side Two medley. The combination of “Golden Slumbers”, “Carry That Weight”, and “The End” gives one more example of the band’s instrumental chemistry. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney opines on the joy behind and the sadness ahead. Rewind to the start of the album, and you get “Come Together”. John Lennon had mostly checked out by the time the group made Abbey Road. But this bluesy, irreverent rocker made plenty of impact anyway.

‘Let It Be’

Let It Be was a Frankenstein monster of an album, one pieced together without complete input from the group that made it. (Just ask Paul McCartney if he was fond of all the choices made.) Nonetheless, the group stumbled into a record that started and ended very well. Even the dialogue included before and after “Two Of Us” and “Get Back” fed into the overall effect. “Two Of Us” allowed us one more opportunity to reflect on the friendship between Paul McCartney and John Lennon, even if Macca didn’t write the song about that. And “Get Back” provided a suitable jolt of energy while also showing that the group’s live chops hadn’t abandoned them.

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