Yellow Submarine (1968)


1.Yellow Submarine
2.Only A Northern Song
3.All Together Now
4.Hey Bulldog
5.It's All Too Much
6.All You Need Is Love
7.Pepperland
8.Sea of Time
9.Sea of Holes
10.Sea of Monsters
11.March of the Meanies
12.Pepperland Waste
13.Yellow Submarine in Pepperland

 

Better known for the film, rather than the music. A little bit unfair since the music is quite good and the film is...well...interesting but nothing that special. The film, based on the popular Ringo crooned tune from the Revolver album was meant to be a children's film. While the material is definitely kid friendly, sometimes it seems more a bizarre LSD trip. In addition to the title cut and All You Need Is Love, there are 4 new Beatle songs here, and all of them are quite good - including two originals from George Harrison.

McCartney's All Together Now rivals the title song as being a nice snappy kid friendly sing-along (except for the line about "taking a friend to bed") and is sharply contrasted with Lennon's abrasive (but excellent) Hey Bulldog. George's It's All Too Much is probably the most underrated Beatle rocker out there and he pulls off Only A Northern Song quite well also. Many of these news songs seem to incorporate the psychedelic style of incorporating too many instruments and sound effects etc. throughout the pieces. Especially during the last couple of minutes on each track (witness all the bells and whistles during It's All Too Much and Lennon and McCartney barking and howling like dogs throughout Hey Bulldog), yet these enhancements never bring the tunes down. It may all be unnecessary, but nothing suffers in the process.

The rest of the disc is some nice score music done by long time producer George Martin. The songs themselves lend a nice ambiance to the project and show the unlearned fan that their producer was quite talented indeed (he later scored the James Bond film "Live and Let Die" that also featured McCartney's killer title song). Several years later when all of the Beatles' albums were released on CD, the idea was come up with to repackage this release with all the groups tunes that were featured in the movie called Yellow Submarine Songtrack. Of course, to make room for the rest of the songs, the George Martin score was removed. As to which of the two is better, depends on your tastes. Since all of the other songs were already released on different albums, this one tends to be a little more special.

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