There is something to be said for the album format in general.
\nNo matter how many times a song can be bludgoned to death on rock
\nradio through overplaying, just pulling out the album it’s from,
\nslapping it on the turntable or in the CD player and giving it a
\nspin helps to put those same overplayed songs into perspective.<\/p>\n
Take a good portion of The Beatles’ catalog. Now, I’m not
\nquestioning their influence on the rock music genre, but doesn’t it
\nget tiring to hear classic rock radio play the same songs over and
\nover again? Yet on my very first listen to
\nA Hard Day’s Night<\/i> (restored to the version originally
\nreleased across the pond), the songs I can occasionally grow tired
\nof hearing… well, they just made sense.<\/p>\n
I can’t say for certainty if this – the third release from John,
\nPaul, George and Ringo – was the album that cemented Beatlemania
\ninto the hearts and minds of Americans, mainly because I wasn’t
\nscheduled to walk the planet for another six years. So if this, the
\nsoundtrack to the Beatles’ first movie, wasn’t the spark, it most
\ncertainly was the explosion as everything came together for the
\nband.<\/p>\n
With no song running over three minutes in length, The Beatles
\nfollow a simple yet powerful rule in rock: Get in, get your message
\nacross, and get out. There’s no need to pad any of these 13 songs
\nwith such effluvia as extended guitar solos or spotlights on drum
\nwork. (Sorry, Ringo – no offense meant.) If anything, these short
\nblasts of power-pop leave the listener wanting more – even today,
\nnearly 40 years after its release, it’s still powerful.<\/p>\n
I could easily gush about songs like “A Hard Day’s Night,” “If I
\nFell” (one of the most beautiful love songs out there), “Can’t Buy
\nMe Love,” “I Should Have Known Better” or any of the hits any rock
\nfan worth their weight in salt already know. But what can be said
\nabout these which hasn’t already been said? Let’s leave it at this:<\/p>\n
this<\/i> is the environment in which these songs were meant to
\nbe heard, no slam against any of the “best-of” releases meant. Even
\nif you haven’t seen the movie (which I’m guilty of), the flow of
\nthese songs just feels right.<\/p>\n
Of these selections, only two are not familiar to classic rock
\nradio fans. “When I Get Home” and “You Can’t Do That” don’t get
\nnearly the amount of airplay – indeed, if they get any at all – as
\ntheir counterparts. Regrettably, these also turn out to be the two
\nweakest links in the whole album chain – not necessarily bad songs,
\nbut just not of the same caliber as the rest of the material.<\/p>\n
So is
\nA Hard Day’s Night<\/i> the perfect place for a newcomer to The
\nBeatles to start with? That’s not an easy call to make, simply
\nbecause the band covered so much musical ground in less than a
\ndecade that to limit one’s scope to only this album almost feels
\nlike they’re getting cheated. If, however, someone wanted to go
\nbeyond a “best-of” collection and really start exploring the albums
\nto discover the true essence of The Beatles, then
\nA Hard Day’s Night<\/i> is a great launchpad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5675],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37646","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-beatles","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37646"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}