1 (2000)
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
At the turn of the millennium, with the Beatles’ vaults seemingly exhausted and the band’s catalogue firmly enshrined in digital permanence, it came as something of a surprise that there was still space for a new release—especially one with such a blunt, singular title: 1. And yet, what might have initially appeared to be little more than a marketing gimmick emerged instead as a masterstroke of conceptual clarity.
The idea was simple: gather every song that reached number one on either the UK or US charts and assemble them into one cohesive collection. The result? A staggering 27 tracks—all released within a mere eight-year period—representing the most commercially successful moments of the most culturally seismic band in history. No outtakes, no rarities, no deep cuts. Just hits.
Of course, any compilation is, by nature, an act of exclusion as much as inclusion. The Beatles’ career was peppered with singles that didn’t make number one—Strawberry Fields Forever, most notably—and albums whose impact dwarfed their chart performance. Still, one glance at the track listing here affirms the brilliance of the idea. From Love Me Do to The Long and Winding Road, every phase of the band’s evolution is represented. Early innocence, mid-career experimentation, and late-period introspection all find their place in just over 78 minutes.
And it’s all the more impressive given the constraints of the compact disc format. The decision to limit the compilation to a single disc—rather than bloating it across multiple volumes—lends 1 a tightness and focus that many greatest-hits packages lack. This is a distillation, not a catalogue. Critically, 1 also served a vital function at the time of its release. While the Red and Blue albums had long served as informal summaries of the Beatles’ two halves, their four-disc sprawl and premium pricing rendered them less accessible to the casual buyer. 1, on the other hand, offered an entry point—a sleek, affordable, and irresistible proposition to new generations encountering the band for the first time.
The sonic presentation was also not left untouched. Remastering efforts brought a new sheen to the recordings, allowing details long buried in the mix to surface with newfound clarity. McCartney’s basslines thump with greater definition. Lennon’s vocals cut sharper. Starr’s drumming, long the subject of subtle underappreciation, finally punches through with appropriate heft.
If there’s a caveat to be found, it’s that 1 is inevitably skewed toward the more straightforward, radio-friendly Beatles. There’s no Tomorrow Never Knows, no Dear Prudence, no I’m Only Sleeping. But that’s not the point. This isn’t about breadth—it’s about impact. And on those terms, 1 delivers perhaps the most densely packed collection of musical triumphs ever assembled on a single disc.
It also unintentionally posed a deliciously ironic twist: the band that once dismissed greatest hits albums as commercial fluff ended up producing what might be the definitive one. And fittingly, 1 itself became a chart-topping juggernaut—reaching number one in more than 35 countries. In short, 1 is more than a compilation. It is a chronicle of dominance, a portrait of perfection, and a reminder that, in a very real sense, The Beatles didn’t just change music—they won.