An Underrated Beatles Album: Beatles For Sale
Beatles For Sale is a frequently forgotten Beatles album (probably the most overlooked Beatles album.) I think that is a bit of a shame because while it’s undoubtedly not among The Beatles best records, it still has some good qualities and I do believe it’s worth taking a close listen to.
In particular I think the 8 original Beatles songs on the album are very good (if not as good as the original songs on Help! and A Hard Day’s Night) What I really like about these recordings is that they’ve got a special connected feeling to them. I think they’d work fantastically as an EP.
Side one really starts off great with “No Reply,” “I’m A Loser,” & “Baby’s In Black.” These are 3 good songs and all of them have this downcast mood that connects them together wonderfully.
I am not a huge fan of the covers on the album, unfortunately. Even more unfortunately is that the covers make up nearly half of the LP (6 of the 14 tracks are cover songs.) The only covers that I’ve got any patience for are Chuck Berry’s “Rock & Roll Music” and Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love.” However even these two are not nearly as good as The Beatles originals.
The most famous of these Lennon/McCartney originals on the LP is definitely “Eight Days A Week” which is a track that both Lennon and McCartney said negative things about (they wrote it together) and the band never played it live, not even once. However despite that, it’s a good tune. No, it is not among their greatest songs, but it’s catchy and the fade-in is very cool.
All of the tracks on this album (both the originals and the covers) sound so much better on the new remastered discs than they did on the old 1980s CDs. I strongly recommend that you get The Beatles in Stereo Box Set and The Beatles in Mono CD Box Set and give both the stereo and mono remastered versions of the album a thorough listen before you go about your life.
I am not saying that Beatles For Sale Remastered is destined to be your new favorite CD, but I do believe you’ll find that’s far better than it’s reputation. In my opinion it’s much better than With The Beatles.