The Beatles - 1 (2000)

The most important part of my review will be the track list that I have pasted in from the item listing:

Track listing
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. 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. Ballad Of John And Yoko
24. Something
25. Come Together
26. Let It Be
27. Long And Winding Road

This is a very comprehensive single CD "Greatest Hits" collection containing many favourites from the band's repertoire. I bought this because I recently saw Paul McCartney live at Hyde Park and was very impressed by his back catalogue. This CD contains many classic songs that I had the priviledge of seeing live. Some of the highlights for me (of the CD and the live show)are:

Yesterday - a beautiful ballad - expertly crafted
Day Tripper - great guitar/bass riff! brilliant vocal harmonies too
Paperback Writer - ditto!
Eleanor Rigby - very evocative lyrics, sang beautifully
Lady Madonna - great short, snappy, "bluesy" piano-based song
Hey Jude - one of the biggest "singalong" numbers ever
Something - a beautiful ballad. Brilliant writing from George Harrison. Lovely chords, stunningly arranged.
Let It Be -
The Long and Winding Road - two more great slow/soft songs.

Apart from the above songs I have picked out, there is some great "poppy" early material which shows how well the boys in the band were writing and singing in their early twenties. I really love the slightly wild drumming on I Want To Hold Your Hand.
The later material showcases more mature songwriting with extra experimentation in the studio.

This collection is a very good "one CD" sample of some of the best songwriting from the sixties, as played by the Fab Four:

Paul McCartney - vocals, bass, keyboards
John Lennon - vocals and rhythm guitar
George Harrison - vocals and rhythm/lead guitar
Ringo Starr - drums and backing vocals

Definitely worth the money!

In my opinion the greatest band of all time but is this their greatest compilation? Yes it is for a single CD Best Of though the Red (1962-66) and Blue (1967-70) double LPs steal its thunder overall. 1 contains 27 songs, all of which made it to the top spot in either the UK or US.

For the Fab Four’s early period, 1 pretty much includes their best songs though, from Revolver onwards, The Beatles' singles represent a somewhat sanitised version of their best output. By all means buy 1 as an introduction though there’s no real substitute for their last four major LPs – Revolver, Sgt Pepper, The White Album and Abbey Road (Let It Be and other latter Beatles ' LPs are less essential).

Particular highlights of 1 for me include the early ebullience of I Want to Hold Your Hand, A Hard Day’s Night with its classic opening chord and closing arpeggios and the beautiful melancholy of Eleanor Rigby and Penny Lane. These are just personal choices as nearly every track on this LP is a classic and, on another day, I may have picked out four others.

1 is a very good first Beatles purchase though like many singles compilations, barely tells half the band’s story. Buy it but don’t stop there in exploring the music of the most influential and significant band of all time. Probably the best band ever as well…

In my opinion the greatest band of all time but is this their greatest compilation? Yes it is for a single CD Best Of though the Red (1962-66) and Blue (1967-70) double LPs steal its thunder overall. 1 contains 27 songs, all of which made it to the top spot in either the UK or US.
For the Fab Four’s early period, 1 pretty much includes their best songs though, from Revolver onwards, The Beatles' singles represent a somewhat sanitised version of their best output. By all means buy 1 as an introduction though there’s no real substitute for their last four major LPs – Revolver, Sgt Pepper, The White Album and Abbey Road (Let It Be and other latter Beatles ' LPs are less essential).

Particular highlights of 1 for me include the early ebullience of I Want to Hold Your Hand, A Hard Day’s Night with its classic opening chord and closing arpeggios and the beautiful melancholy of Eleanor Rigby and Penny Lane. These are just personal choices as nearly every track on this LP is a classic and, on another day, I may have picked out four others.

1 is a very good first Beatles purchase though like many singles compilations, barely tells half the band’s story. Buy it but don’t stop there in exploring the music of the most influential and significant band of all time. Probably the best band ever as well…

OK, let's get this straight:

I am not here to criticize the music contained on this CD, I am a Beatles fan and yes there is some good stuff to br found on here.

However what does bother me about this album is the blatant cynicism of it's release. The fact that it was compiled not with the band's fans in mind but with the sort of person who knows of the Beatles and wants some Beatles music for the car/for doing housework/as an unimaginative present for their 60something relative.

OK, maybe there is nothing wrong with that (not everybody is a music lover, not everybody cares/thinks enough about art to have oppinions on it or search out the best) but couldn't Apple direct these people to the more comprensive, eclectic and frankly better "1962-1966", "1967-1970" and "Past Masters" compilations? I mean all they'd need to do is put big stickers on the front of them saying something like "the Very Best of Beatles".

But no we had to have this, I mean if it wasn't for the sleep inducing "Beatles Love Songs" double LP (truly the nadir of those EMI's 1970's Beatles cash-ins) or the dull "Beatles Ballads" LP (which doesn't include "Elenour Rigby" or "In My Life" but does find time for "Here Comes the Sun"!!!???!!!) this would rank as my least fave Beatles album ever.

This album smacks of money grabbing on Apple's part.

But shouldn't we be used to that? I mean who needs remastered and repackaged versions of the propper albums (where necesary doubles containing the mono, European stereo and USA stereo mixes) when we can have this album or the history re-writing "Anthology" and "Let It Be - Naked" sets which sell fans re-mixed versions of material they already own on bootlegs, or the pointless "Yellow Submarine Songtrack" album (I adore the original "Yellow Submarine" album, it contains 3 of the Beatles best "lost" songs and George Martin's orchestral score, which takes up the second half of the album, is wonderfull)?

Then again I recently realized that here Britain it's only 4 years until the Beatles music begins falling into the public domain so maybe you can't blame Apple for trying to squeeze that last few extra pounds form their assets can you? After all, in only 12 years time every garage and news agent will no doubt be flogging you bargain CDs of "Abbey Road" and "Beatles for Sale" for a lot less than we're currently paying for the "official" editions...

All the Beatles No.1s from Love Me Do to The Long & Winding Road. You can't grumble about the quality of the songs or value for money - a single CD (and 79+ mins) with more tracks than the double Red album (1962-66).I just wonder what the motivation is behind this release. Maybe it's simply to provide a single disc career overview of the greatest pop band in history to those who don't want to invest in 2 double CDs. There will no doubt be those that will complain that no Beatles hits package is complete without Strawberry Fields Forever. But this is a compilation of all of the Beatles' US and UK No.1 hits and unfortunately that song "only" reached No.2 in the UK. The Billboard Hot 100 in the US is compiled from a combination of sales and airplay, and though Penny Lane (the double A flip-side) reached No.1, Strawberry Fields only got enough radio play to reach No.8. I suppose they could have used a different criterion to select their greatest hits, but with so many hits to choose from they couldn't help but exclude some favourites (Please Please Me, Twist & Shout, In My Life, and there is not a single song from from Sgt. Peppers). Still, this is the first time that such classics as She Loves You, Yesterday, Help!, Hey Jude, Get Back and Let It Be have all appeared on the same album. So if you don't own a Beatles album, this is the place to start, and it makes a great gift for anyone who hasn't updated their scratched vinyl records.