With the Beatles

Album: With the Beatles
Release Date: November 22 1963








No help on this review; I'm going it alone. I have always felt like With the Beatles is susceptible to getting lost in the shuffle. Released just four months after Please Please Me, it breaks down to eight original tunes and six covers, just like it's predecessor. As the second album, it doesn't celebrate any major "firsts". Even it's iconic album art is easily forgotten among several more iconic album covers that would succeed it. In short, it was a quick and dirty follow up meant to preserve the band's unparalleled success.

But you know what? I like it better than Please Please Me, by a long shot even. True, Please Please Me is more iconic, and there are individual songs on it that tend to stick in my head more strongly. But every time I fire up With the Beatles, I am reminded of how many great songs are on it.

Where do I start? First there are the covers, which are some of the band's most memorable. "Please Mister Postman", "Money", "Roll Over Beethoven", and "You Really Got a Hold on Me" are all present here, and as expected, the Beatles' takes on these standards are so good that they are often the only versions that people remember. Surprisingly, my favorite of the covers is "Till There was You", which is so obscure that people are likely to think it is a Lennon/McCartney original. The rendition is light and airy, a ray of sunshine that stands out amongst the band's output to this point, at least in terms of style.

Among the original songs, I'm not sure how, exactly, I want to describe them. There's nothing that matches "I Saw Her Standing There" or "Love Me Do" in terms of "smacks you in the face" quality, though the opening lines of "It Won't Be Long" are damn close. Yet overall, the songwriting feels more mature. The harmonies are more clever and interesting, and just four months later, it already sounds like the band is coming into their own. While I'm listening to them, the songs on With the Beatles hold my interest much more easily than those on Please Please Me, but once I'm done they tend to slip away. I'm not sure why this is the case, especially with tracks like "Hold Me Tight", which practically sums up the entire concept of sock hop dance hits for me.

If I had to take a stab at it, I'd say the problem with With the Beatles is one of magnitude. The first and final songs on Please Please Me are definitive in a way that nothing here really is, even if this is a stronger overall body of work. This in turn causes us to go back to Please Please Me with greater frequency, which is what really causes it to stick in our minds. Make no mistake though; With the Beatles has a stronger overall set of covers, and it gives us a solid glimpse into the future sound that the third album, A Hard Day's Night, would use to cement Beatlemania. You may not always remember how good it is, but that just makes it one of the more generous album's in the band's catalog, and it ensures that every re-listen is a treat.