If you only buy one album from the Beatles' early career (and by "early" I mean "pre-Rubber Soul"), buy Help! But if you buy two albums, you could do a lot worse than A Hard Day's Night. aHDN depicts a Fab-Four creeping farther out of the Brit-pop box that they had created with their first two albums. The eponymous single and it's follow-up, Can't Buy Me Love, are pretty decent tunes, and the album features several important firsts for the group.
It's the first album (the only one from their early years) to not have a single cover song on it. It's the first to use song titles based on Ringo's malapropisms (the song A Hard Day's Night would later be joined by Eight Days a Week and Tomorrow Never Knows in the drawer of "things named after stupid shit Ringo said"). Paul's bass is audible for the first time ever on I'll Cry Instead (slight exaggeration, but it's sort of featured in a couple of spots on this song). Ringo doesn't sing on the album (another first--he sang on all of their albums except three). This album is also the first of five film soundtracks--that's right, of the Beatles' 14-album catalog, a full third of the records are soundtracks to movies about and (usually) starring the Beatles. Go fig.
And thankfully, the stereo mixes on this album are actual stereo mixes. It's early stereo, so you still only have three channels (left, center, and right) and things are thrown into weird places by modern standards. Nobody these days will pan an entire drumkit hard left. But again, this is more of a product of the time in which the album was produced, so we can't chide it too hard for that.
And thankfully, the stereo mixes on this album are actual stereo mixes. It's early stereo, so you still only have three channels (left, center, and right) and things are thrown into weird places by modern standards. Nobody these days will pan an entire drumkit hard left. But again, this is more of a product of the time in which the album was produced, so we can't chide it too hard for that.
The albums lags more due to mediocrity than true "suck". I Should Have Known Better and I'm Happy Just To Dance With You could have fit perfectly on With The Beatles. It's standard John-wrote-this-and-played-harmonica fare. Ditto When I Get Home. The penultimate song on the album, You Can't Do That doesn't offend musically so much as lyrically, as its perhaps the most misogynist song in The Beatles' catalog, in which John threatens to leave the listener because she's been talking to another boy.
The only truly bad song on the disc is Tell Me Why, which suffers from being unimaginatively written and badly recorded. The vocals are thin and perhaps even a bit overloaded at times. And at 1:32, there's a laughable falsetto line that, if you've been ignoring the song until then, will reach out and grab you. (For another fun should-have-been-fixed moment, check out 1:45 into If I Fell, where you can hear Paul--I think--run out of breath mid note.)
For me, the big disappointment is the potential that shows up in songs like And I Love Her, Any Time At All, and I'll Be Back. They're good songs, and while they show the group experimenting with the innovative technique called "Writing songs in a minor key"everything still manages to resolve to a major chord. Le sigh. Nice Effort, boys.
And if I can just make a brief critique here about the over-reliance on run-on-sentences. Take a look at the McCartney-written If I Fell with line breaks in it:
That was a single sentence, (almost Palin-esque) if you're playing along at home. Also, not exactly the most profound lyrics in the world--they're still writing nothing but love songs without a whole lot of depth. That said, aHDN is leaps and bounds ahead of the albums that proceeded it or, as we'll soon discover, the album that directly followed it.
And did anyone else notice a distinct The-Mamas-and-The-Papas vibe from I'll Be Back and Thing We Said Today?
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Incidentally, I'm not in any way implying that The Beatles ripped off The Mamas and The Papas. That would be impossible, since aHDN came out in late 1964, TMaTP didn't release anything until 1965. I'm just amused by the similarity in the two sounds.
The only truly bad song on the disc is Tell Me Why, which suffers from being unimaginatively written and badly recorded. The vocals are thin and perhaps even a bit overloaded at times. And at 1:32, there's a laughable falsetto line that, if you've been ignoring the song until then, will reach out and grab you. (For another fun should-have-been-fixed moment, check out 1:45 into If I Fell, where you can hear Paul--I think--run out of breath mid note.)
For me, the big disappointment is the potential that shows up in songs like And I Love Her, Any Time At All, and I'll Be Back. They're good songs, and while they show the group experimenting with the innovative technique called "Writing songs in a minor key"everything still manages to resolve to a major chord. Le sigh. Nice Effort, boys.
And if I can just make a brief critique here about the over-reliance on run-on-sentences. Take a look at the McCartney-written If I Fell with line breaks in it:
So I hope you see
That I
Would love to love you
And that she
Will cry
When she learns we are two
'Cause I couldn't stand the pain
And I
Would be sad if our new love
Was in vain
That was a single sentence, (almost Palin-esque) if you're playing along at home. Also, not exactly the most profound lyrics in the world--they're still writing nothing but love songs without a whole lot of depth. That said, aHDN is leaps and bounds ahead of the albums that proceeded it or, as we'll soon discover, the album that directly followed it.
And did anyone else notice a distinct The-Mamas-and-The-Papas vibe from I'll Be Back and Thing We Said Today?
]{p
Incidentally, I'm not in any way implying that The Beatles ripped off The Mamas and The Papas. That would be impossible, since aHDN came out in late 1964, TMaTP didn't release anything until 1965. I'm just amused by the similarity in the two sounds.
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