1962 - 1966, 1967 - 1970 (1973)
1962 - 1966
Disc One
1. Love Me Do
2. Please Please Me
3. I Saw Her Standing There *
4. Twist and Should *
5. From Me To You
6. She Loves You
7. I Want To Hold You Hand
8. This Boy *
9. All My Loving
10. Roll Over Beethoven *
11. You Really Got a Hold On Me *
12. Can't Buy Me Love
13. You Can’t Do That *
14. A Hard Day's Night
15. And I Love Her
16. Eight Days A Week
17. I Feel Fine
18. Ticket To Ride
19. Yesterday
Disc Two
1. Help!
2. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
3. We Can Work It Out
4. Day Tripper
5. Drive My Car
6. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
7. Nowhere Man
8. Michelle
9. In My Life
10. If I Needed Someone *
11. Girl
12. Paperback Writer
13. Eleanor Rigby
14. Yellow Submarine
15. Taxman *
16. Got to Get You Into My Live *
17. I’m Only Sleeping *
18. Here, There and Everywhere *
19. Tomorrow Never Knows *
* On 2023 release only
1967 - 1970
Disc One
1. Strawberry Fields Forever
2. Penny Lane
3. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
4. With A Little Help From My Friends
5. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
6. Within You Without You *
7. A Day in the Life
8. All You Need is Love
9. I Am the Walrus
10. Hello Goodbye
11. The Fool on the Hill
12. Magical Mystery Tour
13. Lady Madonna
14. Hey Jude
15. Revolution
Disc Two
1. Back in the U.S.S.R.
2. Dear Prudence *
3. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
4. Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
5. Glass Onion *
6. Blackbird *
7. Hey Bulldog *
8. Get Back
9. Don't Let Me Down
10. The Ballad of John and Yoko
11. Old Brown Shoe
12. Here Comes the Sun
13. Come Together
14. Something
15. Octopus's Garden
16. Oh! Darling *
17. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) *
18. Let it Be
19. Across the Universe
20. I Me Mine *
21. The Long and Winding Road
22. Now and Then *
* On 2023 release only
In 1973, just three years after the implosion of the world’s most influential rock group, EMI released what would become—by accident or design—the definitive postscript: 1962–1966 and 1967–1970, universally known as the “Red” and “Blue” albums. These compilations served as monuments to the band’s dual legacies: youthful exuberance and later-day experimental sophistication.
Unlike many cash-in compilations that flooded the market in the post-breakup years (most of which have long since disappeared into vinyl oblivion), these double albums endured. And rightly so. They function not merely as greatest-hits packages—though that is how they are often labeled—but as thematic retrospectives that map the Beatles’ artistic arc from Liverpool mop-tops to cultural revolutionaries. Hits abound, of course, but so do select album cuts and fan-favored oddities that never charted, proving that popularity was only one axis of value in the Beatles' canon.
The Red Album opens with Love Me Do and traverses the early catalog with almost documentary precision, spotlighting the band’s mastery of pop brevity and vocal harmony. It’s a historical scroll unrolling in 45 RPM flashes: the birth of modern pop songwriting condensed into a handful of harmonicas, handclaps, and three-part vocals. By contrast, the Blue Album captures the band in post-psychedelic bloom—dense with layered meaning, sonic ambition, and Lennon’s rising cynicism. From Strawberry Fields Forever to The Long and Winding Road, it is a journey from youth to disenchantment, from screaming girls to fractured studio solitude.
Though not originally conceived for CD, their transition to the digital age was inevitable—if imperfect. The physical limitations of compact discs meant that the original double-LP formats couldn't be condensed, and fans were asked to buy each set individually. Financially cumbersome, yes—but artistically worthwhile. These were albums built to endure, not ephemera designed for jukebox rotations.
Fast-forward to 2023 and the Beatles once again found themselves in the headlines. Leveraging AI technology, a long-shelved John Lennon demo was resurrected and polished into what was marketed—cheekily and perhaps truthfully—as “a new Beatles song.” The Red and Blue albums were reissued and “expanded” to include this artifact. One might cynically call this a cash grab, but in truth, there is a certain poetic justice in ending the Beatles' story not with silence, but with a reconstructed whisper from the past.