It's a little bit embarrassing, frankly. To be faced with the task of describing the music of the most relentlessly original band of all time, and to realise that what you really want to say is the lamest of cliches. Oh well, here goes anyway. Listening to the newly remastered Beatles albums is like hearing the songs for the very first time all over again.
As well-trod as that line might be, I mean it. Time and again, on album after album, I felt as if I were listening to music I'd never heard before. I expected these remasters to be a serious improvement on the 1987 CDs, which were flat and lifeless, and a travesty of the original albums; I expected to be thinking things like: "Well, they've really brought some crispness to the hi-hat on this one." What I didn't expect was to be blown away by the music all over again.
What makes the new versions so much better? Crucially, the technology that transfers analogue sound into the digital domain is significantly better than it was 20 years ago, so before the remastering engineers started tweaking anything, they had already got the sound back closer to the original masters than before. Then they used denoising technology and overall limiting. Importantly, the engineers avoided today's trend to limit the music heavily in favour of a subtle treatment that adds oomph but retains the original dynamics.
Amazing
I resisted the invitation to go and listen to the new versions in Abbey Road studios, because what wouldn't sound good pumping out of those huge monitors? I listened to the albums on a system that was neither new nor expensive. And yet the experience was amazing. Hearing the new versions turned these tracks back from cultural landmarks into songs, and turned the band back from icons into four musicians bashing away at instruments.
You can hear the three separate voices coming together to form those early harmonies; you can distinguish the building blocks of Strawberry Fields Forever; the noise in A Day in the Life isn't a noise anymore, it's an orchestra of individual instruments all making their own way to the climax. Oh, that's how they did it. And when John Lennon sings I Am the Walrus, he has never been so clearly, thrillingly right there in the room with you.
So even if you know the Beatles' music inside out, yes, you should seriously consider investing in as many of these remastered albums as you can afford.
If you don't know the Beatles' music inside out, this is the perfect moment to find out what all the fuss is about. And if you're one of the many millions who own the one compilation, don't go thinking, "Oh, I must have all the best tracks already", because the Beatles albums don't adhere to today's two-singles-plus-filler formula; indeed, many of them didn't contain any singles at all; so even if you own one and have played the hits to death, there's still a whole other world to explore.
Please Please Me
The Beatles' debut reveals a band that thanks to countless hours on stage in Liverpool and Hamburg - are already light years ahead of the pack. The visceral energy of opening track I Saw Her Standing There and album closer Twist and Shout haven't dimmed - and explain exactly why this album acted as a wake-up call to the youth.
With the Beatles
With Beatlemania already established, the band's second album opened with a brilliant salvo: It Won't Be Long, All I've Got to Do and All My Loving (the song with which the band announced themselves to America on their first Ed Sullivan show performance). As with Please Please Me, the album mixes Beatles originals with covers of their favourite R&B songs, notably Please Mr Postman and Money.
A Hard Day's Night
The film A Hard Day's Night captures Beatlemania at its height; and the album of the same name acts as a semi-soundtrack, containing the seven songs featured in the film, plus six others. The band's early trademark harmonica is gradually being eased out, replaced by the jangle of George Harrison's new Rickenbacker guitar, which inspired a generation of American bands. With the mellow Things We Said Today, the raucous You Can't Do That and the irresistible Can't Buy Me Love, this is the high point of the early Beatles sound.
Beatles for Sale
The sound of the Beatles treading water. The strain of four albums, a movie and countless tours in the space of two years finally shows, as the songwriting quality dips. It's not a bad album, but by the Beatles' high standards it's unremarkable (with the honourable exception of Eight Days a Week and a cover of Chuck Berry's Rock and Roll Music). With hindsight, we realise that the band were merely taking a deep breath.
Help!
A transitional album that marks both the last hurrah of the Beatles as an uncomplicated family-friendly pop group (The Night Before, Another Girl, Yesterday) and also the first stirrings of the revolution to come - in the lyrics of Help!, the vocal performance of You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, the guitar sound on I Need You and It's Only Love, and the drumming on Ticket to Ride - Ringo Starr, with two thumps on his tom-tom drawing the line that connects the moptops of She Loves You (back in 1963) with the visionaries of Tomorrow (Monday) Never Knows (to come in 1966).
Rubber Soul
The distinctive cover, on which the band's faces are stretched out of shape, is entirely apt, because this is where they really begin to reshape music. They took pop music and stretched all its boundaries, pushing lyrics (Nowhere Man) and melody (If I Needed Someone) into new territories. On Norwegian Wood and In My Life you can virtually hear a generation growing up.
Revolver
This is the template for all modern guitar bands. You simply can't do it better than this. Amazingly, the album's astonishing closing track, Tomorrow (Monday) Never Knows, was the first thing they recorded, establishing a palette of backwards guitar, distorted vocals and distinctly un-pop rhythms that complemented a new seriousness in the lyrics (I know what it's like to be dead). The distinction between Lennon's angst (She Said She Said, I'm Only Sleeping) and McCartney's good-time pop (Yellow Submarine) is more marked than ever, but the conflicts and contrasts only add to the band's brilliance.
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
This was the start of something entirely new, and thanks to the remasterers' art, it all sounds entirely new again: the swirling chorus of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Lennon's precise phrasing on Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, the remarkably sleazy brass on Good Morning Good Morning. I've known for decades - in theory - that the transition from Lennon's section of A Day in the Life to McCartney's section is something really special. Now it actually is.
Magical Mystery Tour
The original EP containing the songs from the TV film is - I Am the Walrus aside not the band's finest hour; but the extended album also ropes in Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane and All You Need Is Love, making this a far more important document of "summer of love" Beatles.
The Beatles
One of the real revelations of the remastering process, as the band's rockier side - Helter Skelter, Birthday, Yer Blues - hits you like a series of punches to the gut. The less-is-more approach to limiting pays dividends as the extraordinary dynamic shifts of the album (Glass Onion to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da; While My Guitar Gently Weeps to Happiness Is a Warm Gun) are retained and even heightened. The combination of Lennon's vocal and McCartney's bass will leave you physically exhausted. The album was popularly known as The White Album.
Yellow Submarine
The least essential of all the Beatles albums; but if you have a soft spot for It's All Too Much or Hey Bulldog, you'll want to hear the added power they have here.
Abbey Road
To get a handle on what the remastering process has achieved, all you need to do is listen to the first few seconds of Come Together, as McCartney and Starr create that distinctive thump-and-shimmer rhythm. The structure of Something - delicate touches in the verses, another brilliant McCartney-and-Starr combination in the middle eight - is fully revealed. The medley that closes the album is one of the band's greatest studio achievements, and you can almost feel the remasterers' joy at the gorgeous textures they reveal as Polythene Pam segues into She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.
Let It Be
Hopefully, one of the benefits of the remastering process will be the rehabilitation of Let It Be. Some people criticise it for lacking the studio finesse, but heard here - with greater clarity in the wah-wah guitar on Across the Universe, the choir on The Long and Winding Road, and the soaring guitar solo on the title track - it reveals itself to be an album full of wonderful moments.
Past Masters
One of those albums that collects together all a band's non-album singles and some rarities. In most cases these things are "for completists only", but because the Beatles kept so many of their great singles off their albums, this is actually a wonderful compilation that takes you from She Loves You and I Want to Hold Your Hand, through Day Tripper and Paperback Writer. It's not a Greatest Hits, but it's full of great hits.
