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The Beatles' 1966 album Revolver is seen by many Beatles fans as their best album. On the music review site Rate Your Music, it's currently ranked as the second best album of all time by anyone (after another Beatles album, Abbey Road.)
The album includes some of The Beatles best known songs including "Eleanor Rigby" & "Yellow Submarine" and it also includes some of their most experimental songs, in particular "Tomorrow Never Knows" which closes the album in futuristic fashion. Even today, over 40 years later, "Tomorrow Never Knows" sounds like the future to me.
Revolver includes an incredible variety of songs from the rock of "Taxman" to the childlike "Yellow Submarine" to the Indian music influenced "Love You To." It has been said that every song on Revolver started a new sub genre of rock music and I would say that's probably only a slight exaggeration.
Another factor that makes Revolver standout among Beatles albums is how much more evenly the songwriting is spread out among Lennon, McCartney, & Harrison than on most of their albums. George Harrison really came into his own as a songwriter with this album. 3 of the album's 14 songs were his, 6 were primarily Paul McCartney's, and 5 were primarily John Lennon's.
While the album doesn't have the same flow to it that their next album (1967's Sgt. Pepper) would have, it does arguably have more consistency. There really are no weak points in the album. Every song on Revolver has it's charms.
Looking at the songs that Paul McCartney wrote for this album in particular is very impressive: "Eleanor Rigby," "Here, There and Everywhere," "Yellow Submarine," "Good Day Sunshine," "For No One," & "Got to Get You into My Life." Talk about timeless classics. McCartney really couldn't do any wrong at this point. While almost everyone knows "Eleanor Rigby" & "Yellow Submarine" (and "Got to Get You into My Life" is very well known too) the other songs are just as excellent.
McCartney himself has said that "Here, There and Everywhere" is one of his favorites of his own songs. For me "For No One" is right there with it. These are songs that are just too beautiful and too perfect for words.
It's sometimes said that Rubber Soul was The Beatles "marijuana album" and Revolver was their "LSD album" (or their first LSD album, there would be more to come!) And I can definitely see where that perspective comes from. Revolver is an album of ideas. The arrangements and instrumentation are very thoughtful. This is really music to really listen to, not just to sing along to. This is "art rock." But it's usually subtle enough in it's artiness ("Tomorrow Never Knows" & "Love You To" being some obvious exceptions) that just regular music listeners (rather than true music lovers) can get down to the tunes too.
While Revolver isn't actually my favorite Beatles album (The White Album) takes that honor for me, it is an amazing album that deserves all of the accolades it has received.
Marvin J. Markus writes about The Beatles at the music by day music blog.
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