Andrew_Hicks's Full Review: Please Please Me by The Beatles
Listening to Please Please Me, it seems almost inconceivable that the same band who released this put out Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band just three years later. Three years! It takes me that long to get around to changing the oil in my car.
Okay, time to back up. As many of you know, I'm in the process of reviewing my entire CD collection, A-Z, and that means the occasional detour. Thanks to an unexplainable '80s-pop binge I had mid-tenth grade, I have to review 13 back-to-back Billboard Top Hits compilations. And I have to review the entire Beatles catalogue at once, blowing that wad early on in the music-review game.
There are two camps when it comes to the Beatles. Some people like the poppy teen-idol stuff from the 1964 era, and the rest prefer the experimental, mind-blowingly brilliant music of albums like Abbey Road and the White Album. Compared with those masterpieces, Please Please Me seems like an awfully inauspicious beginning. It was recorded hastily and is loaded with cover tunes, most notably an update of the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout."
So, to me anyway, the album has a naive, half-assed feel to it. Maybe some of you like the mental picture of John, Paul and George gathered in a semi-circle, singing the harmony vocals to "Chains" with enormous smiles on their faces. I don't; it's too happy, too musically uncomplicated. It's the kind of stuff that should stay on 45. Ditto for the Ringo lounge lead on "Boys" and the Brit doo-wop of "Baby It's You."
But Please Please Me isn't useless. There are a few gem originals, like the album opener, "I Saw Her Standing There." It's an early-rock classic, a raucous pelvis-shaker from Paul that resides firmly in group sing-along territory and has a terrific guitar solo. The title track is also of sing-along quality, but by default. It's catchy but unremarkable. Two songs, though, that show alarmingly advanced pop instincts are "Love Me Do" and "Do You Want to Know a Secret." The Beatles knew how to grab ahold of an audience's ears even then.
I'm going to get accused of being a curmudgeon here, but I don't think Please Please Me is an essential Beatles album. Maybe I hold the band to the ridiculously high standard that only they can meet, but it's hard to listen to this album when Revolver is just a page or two away in my CD book. The album is worth owning, though, if just to hear John tear up the lead vocals in "Twist and Shout."
It's interesting to note -- the Beatles' musical ability grows at an almost exponential rate from this point on, culminating in Sgt. Pepper. My advice to you is to wait for a lazy afternoon when you're lying around the house with a book or some needlepoint (or a warm bong; that wouldn't hurt, either) and put the Beatles' albums on in chronological order, just listening to them grow and change as the experiment wears on. It's a fascinating several hours.
Their first historical album, The Beatles were raw, rough, and all rock & roll. John, Paul, Ringo, and George hit the music stage with Please Please M...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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