Beatles – 1
Label: Capitol
Release Date: 11/14/00 

Tracks
1) Love Me Do
2) From Me To You
3) She Loves You
4) I Want To Hold Your Hand
5) Can't Buy Me Love
6) A Hard Day's Night
7) I Feel Fine
8) Eight Days A Week
9) Ticket To Ride
10) Help!
11) Yesterday
12) Day Tripper
13) We Can Work It Out
14) Paperback Writer
15) Yellow Submarine
16) Eleanor Rigby
17) Penny Lane
18) All You Need Is Love
19) Hello, Goodbye
20) Lady Madonna
21) Hey Jude
22) Get Back
23) The Ballad Of John And Yoko
24) Something
25) Come Together
26) Let It Be
27) The Long And Winding Road

It’s a safe bet that any time a CD from the Beatles is released it will shoot straight to number 1. This is yet another compilation of classic Beatles songs, except this time the idea was to only include the No. 1 hits from the band, as you can see it is a staggering 27 songs! 

Even 30 years after their breakup the Beatles still are at the top of the rock/pop world. Why? The songwriting. Listening to songs like “Yesterday”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Let it Be”, “Something”, “Hey Jude”, “Help!” and “We can work it out” never gets old. 

While there are some detractors, it’s pretty much universally understood that the Beatles were the greatest band in the history of rock. No. 1 showcases why that is still true today. Although I did find myself skipping over the first 9 songs, this disc has been in heavy rotation in my CD player. True I prefer the later day Beatles music from Rubber Soul on, but it was the early hits that made them stars and gave them the creative freedom to make the revolutionary music of their last few years together. 

No. 1 is a good collection for any Beatles fan; it contains some of their best-known music. It is also a good tool to introduce younger fans to the world of the Beatles. 

It’s not their best compilation on the record store shelves, its missing songs like “A Day in Life”, “In My Life”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “Black Bird”, “Rocky Raccoon”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, “Hide Your Love Away” to name a few. But this is only the number 1 hits, so there you go. 

It’s a worthy buy, but purchasing this is no excuse for not picking up the two definitive compilations The Beatles 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, plus the Anthology albums. Why you are at it pick up The Beatles (white album), Rubber Soul, Sgt Peppers, Let it Be and Abby Road. Then you and your friends can take one Sunday afternoon and listen to the albums back to back, that experience should convince you that this band’s fame is indeed well founded. 

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Your Turn, What do you think?

Fan Speak:

Posted by Fab4:
You said it all very well. I have been a huge highly impressed Beatles fan(especially a John & Paul fan) since I was 9 years old. I got my first Beatles book for my 11th birthday and I had every album by the age of 13.I was born in 1965 during the middle of their recording career and I have always loved all of their music from the early period to their later period even though they sounded different but just as great.

Great early songs like John's beautiful If I Fell,I'll Be Back etc and Paul's beautiful And I Love her and his great blues rocker,She's A Woman etc are great songs too!

There is an excellent book by Mark Lewisohn called,The Beatles Recording Sessions which documents details all oftheir recording sessions of their amazing 8 year recording career and it really shows how truly creative,brilliant and innovative especially John and Paul were in the studio. Many of their recording engineers are interviewed too and are al impressed with them also. Some of them went on to work with other well known artists. Norman Smith one of their early engineers went on to work with Pink Floyd,Ken Scot went on to work with David Bowie and Alan Parsons was one of their engineers on their last 2 albums Let it Be and Abbey Road. The Rolling Stones were also big fans and good friends with The Beatles and Mick Jagger was at 4 Beatles recording sessions and Keith Richards was at 2 with him! There is even a big picture in the book of Mick Jagger sitting next to John and Paul in their recording console. He came there for the remix of The Beatles album Revolver.He also went to their recording of Baby You're A Rich Man in May 1967 just to stand on the side and watch and listen to them record it he even sang at the end of the song and his name is included on the tape box for this song!

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