HELP!

A bit of a mixed bag, this album. Some of the songs are cringe-worthy. Others are pieces of genious art. To start with the latter; we cannot talk about The Beatles without talking about their most played song ever; Yesterday. Although this is more a Paul McCartney solo effort. John Lennon hated that song and made the world aware of that in the years afterwards. If I am not mistaken, a song called How Do You Sleep ? from one of his solo albums touches onto the matter of Yesterday. Anyway; it is a cracking good song and deservedly one of the icons of the last century. The two other good songs are Help and Ticket To Ride.

There are some pretty OK songs like for example Night Before. There are also some pretty naive, honey dripping cringe-worthy songs here too. There is too many of them, in fact.

The overriding impression is that Help is a transitional album and the album before Rubber Soul. The album that really took The Beatles into another universe. I think Help though is a nice album. It is the album that gave us Yesterday and that is good enough to give it three stars. It is a good The Beatles album and nothing more.

3 stars