Beatles For Sale (1964)


1.No Reply
2.I'm A Loser
3.Baby's In Black
4.Rock & Roll Music
5.I'll Follow The Sun
6.Mr. Moonlight
7.Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey
8.Eight Days A Week
9.Words Of Love
10.Honey Don't
11.Every Little Thing
12.I Don't Want To Spoil The Party
13.What You're Doing
14.Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby

 

With Beatlemania now in full swing, the boys were thrust into an unforgiving, neverending schedule of touring, recording, VIP appearances, more touring, movie-making, television shows and more touring. What they needed at this point was a well deserved vacation. Economics dictated otherwise. Just by looking at the cover of this album, you could tell that the boys were pushing it. Ultimately, the music suffered slightly. But only slightly.

This was the Beatles after all, and whenever they slipped it was usually only a slight slip. The follow up to A Hard Day's Night has the band regressing slightly. They once more go back to performing several covers along with brilliant original compositions. The standout this time around is the catchy Eight Days a Week that charted at #1 - back when album tracks still faced slightly stronger odds of not being heard on the radio. Other standouts are McCartney's simple I'll Follow the Sun and the slightly-more complex Every Little Thing.

They handle older material possibly better than they ever have before with Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey, Rock & Roll Music and the Carl Perkins standout Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby (with George on vocals). Ringo then does what Ringo does best with the country-ish cover of Honey Don't.

This time around, they're are some less than memorable moments. Baby's in Black sounds a bit choppy in its 3/4 time and Mr. Moonlight sounds a little to waltzy and proves that just maybe there might be some genres that this group shouldn't touch. Overall, though, this record succeeds far more than not - and it certainly was better than just about anything else at the time so it remains a "must" for any collection.

Go back to the main page
Go To Next Review