342. The Beatles, "Let It Be"

 


I guess Rolling Stone thinks this is the Beatles' worst album because it's the first one we've seen and therefore the lowest ranked and I'm assuming all 12 Beatles studio albums will be on here.  I guess I can see it, which is to say that the worst Beatles album is still better than most other albums ever made.  

It's weird, when I first listened to it (and I never owned this album, I'm guessing I never really listened to it all the way through before) it seemed like kind of a patchwork or pastiche.  There's the ragged, poppy, almost demo-sounding "Two of Us," and later there's the orchestral and grand "The Long and Winding Road."  There's a reason for this, of course - by the time they recorded this, the band was openly feuding with each other, and then they eventually just quit and moved on to the sessions for Abbey Road, which was then released before this album was.

But man, oh, man, the high points on this album are super fucking high.  There's the magical and lilting and ethereal "Across the Universe," the full expression of Lennon's hippy transcendental meditation phase.  The title track, of course, a plaintive and aching entreaty for peace that could be read, I guess, as Paul asking for things to just get back to normal.  This, of course, would never happen.  And "Get Back," one of the finest rock songs ever written, and one that was famously played on the EMI rooftop at the famous public concert on January 30, 1969.


The Beatles Get Back (Rooftop) from StipuledSum5704 on Vimeo.

There are some problems too.  "The Long and Winding Road" is probably a great song, but then Phil Spector - there he is again! Will we never be free of Phil Spector? - got a hold of it and added E-Z listening horns and transformed the whole thing into an overwrought dentist office ballad.  Damn you, Phil Spector.  (McCartney later tried to remedy the problems by releasing Let It Be...Naked, a remix with Spector's contributions largely stripped out.  I've never listened to it but I guess I should.)

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? A lot.

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