THE BEATLES '1'

An excellent compilation, bringing together all the Beatles' number ones from the UK and the US. Unfortunately, the vagaries of the early UK charts and the differences in the two countries mean we get "Love Me Do" (which only reached 17 in the UK) and we don't get "Please please me". The biggest injustice in the history of the singles chart also means we don't get "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "Penny Lane" (the greatest single of all time) as the 2 songs were counted separately and so it was beaten to the top by Englebert Humperdinck's "Please release me".

That aside, this features 27 songs which nearly everyone will know and so is a required purchase for those of you who don't already have all the other albums.

This is, maybe, the "essential compilation" of The Beatles `songs, as it has some of their most famous songs. I recommend it specially for new listeners of their music, as a starting point before listening to their other albums.

This album also has all the songs remastered, so the sound of this album is very good, despite having the three first songs in Mono. The booklet also has very good notes about the recording dates and release dates of each song as singles.

This album is also important because the songs are in chronological order, showing the evolution of the sound of the band between 1962 and 1970.

It also was, and maybe still is, the best, or one of the best selling albums of all times.

My god this album brings back so many memories. I remember when I was younger I used to listen to this album non stop all day; it was probably my first real musical interest. This led me to discover Bob Dylan which led to greater things. This album has influenced the way I play guitar more than another as my uncle is a hardcore fan of The Beatles and ever since I started playing guitar my uncle has taught me to play almost all of the songs here as well as other blues songs. If you only ever get one Beatles album, and your looking for something good then I'd recommend this album, all the hits are there. From a progressive out look 1 excludes some of the more progressive Beatles song however. I find the way all 26 songs can fit on one disc very attracting, this is a very easy album to find and enjoy. I've been listening to 1 from the day it came out apparently and it has made a giant impression on me.The problem is that most of the stuff on this album isn't really progressive as far as The Beatles go, so a healthy 3 stars is in order here.

Most groups would be happy if they ever had a single reach the #1 spot on the charts. That's what makes this particular collection astonishing. Not one or two but 27 songs by the Fab Four reached the pinnacle of modern music and, as you listen to one classic after another, you can't help but be struck by the awesomeness of it all. Will there ever be another like the Beatles? Perhaps, but probably not in our lifetime. So, if you for some strange reason don't have any of their fine albums in your collection, you certainly should have this around at least. Like them or not, they made history with incredibly well-crafted songs that constantly re-shaped the music world and great art in any form begs to be admired.

This is an interesting compilation, especially for the possibility of accompanying, in chronological order, how The Beatles changed so radically, from a pop band just like thousands of others, to an original and clever band that is appreciated by almost everyone, from classical composers, like Aaron Copland, to heavy metal fans. From punk rockers to progressive die-hard fans, like me, who can listen in Beatles' work to the real origins of Progressive Rock.

The first song here is Love me do. it's a ridiculous song, where John repeats the same melody and lyrics 4 times, in order to make a song with more than two minutes. In the middle, he uses a harmonica riff copied from another artist whose name I forgot. From the second to the sixth song, the same structure of eerie songs, without any interesting detail, continues. In I Fell Fine, things begin to change. The melody is slightly more cleverly developed, and the bass is very interesting and noteworthy. But it's in Yesterday that everything changes. Paul sings a perfectly constructed melody, with a wisely arranged cello accompanying him. From now on, every song will have a distinctive progressive mark, sometimes slight, like the wonderfully played guitar of Something, sometimes very apparent, for example the amazing use of changing time signatures and unexpected harmonies on All you need is love, or the use of the string quartet on Eleanor Rigby, which has another astonishing melody. The disc ends with the completely clever and beautiful The Long and Winding Road, and someone who doesn't know The Beatles would never say the band that composed this almost classical song is the same of She Loves You. This compilation shows us how the late Beatles were important on developing the new genre which would be called Progressive. All the aspects that would define prog (except for the use of longer songs) can be found here. Let's see some: · Complex time signatures- In some of their songs there are very, very interesting uses of time changes. Here it can be noticed only in All you need is love. · Use of keyboards and different instruments- Very clear on Penny Lane, The lo0ng and winding road and, of course, Eleanor Rigby, which was a pioneer on the dialogue between rock and classical · Explorative and intelligent lyrics- I won't even comment this one. just take a look at Penny Lane's lyrics.

This is probably the best and most conscise Beatles compilation available, It has the best assortment of songs chronilogically from their birth to their death.

The songs themselves are picked to appeal to the general audience, and they picked them well in that aspect. All of the best classic Beatles songs everybodies heard on the radio a million times, but on a CD. Having said that, it lacks in the more progressive Beatles period, not enough songs from Sgt. Pepper's or Magical Mystery Tour.

It's a good starting point for a young Beatles fan, and a good, solid compilation.

An excellent Beatles' compilation.

This one contains 27 songs, all of them were hits and all of them are very well known. There is not much material of interest for a progressive rock fan, simply because it's impossible to make a perfect compilation to please everybody's taste - and this one is somewhat thin on the prog side - there is no "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" or "I'm The Walrus" included.

However, all of these songs are good old rock staples - and we all know them very well. From that point of view, this is a good value for a newcomer in the world of THE BEATLES or good rock music in general.

Perhaps the best thing about the compilation is its educational value - and this is not to be overlooked by anyone who is interested in development of prog rock and rock music in general. Why an educational value? Well, listening to this album fro the first track to the very last I realised one crucial thing: the evolving, or progress, if you like it. Track listing is a perfect example of gradation between radio friendly simple rock 'n' roll hits to sophisticated psychedelia. Basically, you are listening one band evolving. This one will help you understand why some things happened in music history. Perhaps that was not the intention of compilation-makers, but it happened anyway, the tracks are sorted more or less chronologically.

It's only a pity that editors didn't took one step further and included a few highlights from the band's catalogue. However, this CD is worth having.

Four stars because of good music AND its educational value.

This is the ultimate in Beatles compilations. Virtually every single one of the Beatles' #1 hits are included on this compilation, and for the first time in my life I think I have found a compilation that doesn't do a terrible job arranging the songs. Each song is placed in order of when it hit #1, and that creates a nice "trip through the decades" feel, while making it easier to pick out when they changed their sounds and why. Every Beatles fan should have this in their collection, and even if you aren't a Beatles fan (yet!), there is still something here for everyone. Some good rock (Get Back, Come Together, Paperback Writer), nice ballads (The Ballad of John and Yoko, We Can Work It Out), and those numerous classic Beatles hits (A Hard Day's Night, Day Tripper, Yellow Submarine).

The only gripe I have with this album, however, is the fact that due to dissimilarities between the US and UK charting processes, we miss out on the UK number one hit Please Please Me and the US number one hit Strawberry Fields Forever. Without those two songs, it cannot be a true #1 hits collection, although this certainly does come close. An excellent collection, highly recommended to anybody, fan or not.

As much as I usually don't do the whole greatest hits thing...this really is a good cross section of a great bands work...and unlike alot of the Emerson Lake and Palmer collections...doesn't use too much from a single album to ruin it for when you buy it. It features the good catchy singles and includes basically everything a casual listener would enjoy. However, for a progressive rock fans...a Beatles full length album is the only way, but I would not consider this one a shame at all. A very good number 1 hit album. Get it if you kinda like the band. Don't get it if you really like them. (Get all the albums!)

I purchased this CD when it was released, and I am now one out of twenty millions by now to own this compilation.

It became their fifteenth Nr. 1 album in the UK. But this album broke lots of records.

It is a great collection of their best known songs and should please anyone who is willing to have these songs on one CD only. The promoter of the idea for this record must have been happy to see that the whole of these songs (twenty-seven) was clocking at seventy-nine minutes. Just the CD capacity.

Otherwise, they should have deleted one song. But which one since it is supposed to fit all their Nr. 1 songs ?

I guess that lots of people will be happy with this collection although their most creative ones are of course not available since they were not released as a single (like "Getting Better", "A Day in the Life", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" etc.) or some jewels like "Michele", "I Want You (She's so Heavy)" or "Across the Universe".

But that was the concept of this compilation work.

How can someone resist to those timeless songs ? Very nice as well to have several songs which were unavailable on an a studio like "We Can Work it Out", "Day Tripper", "Lady Madonna", "Hey Jude" or "The Ballad of John and Yoko".

Other singles were already available on the very good US compilation "Magical Mystery Tour".

Anyway, this is an excellent way to introduce the Fab Four to the younger generations and a pleasant present for the older ones.

Four stars.

In my new vision of Prog it is difficult to judge The Beatles as Prog band. But sure The Beatles are between the inventors of Prog with ''Revolver'' and ''Sgt. Pepper's...''.

''1'' is only a compilation of UK or USA #1 and for this motive (but only for this motive) this compilation is good.

In my view is important that in these track list certain songs are presents. But... Is Prog present? Well... No. But nevertheless be said that ''1'' is a compilation for Progsters. This because The Beatles invent Prog, also if in this compilation Prog is not present.

When I was a child I heard many times The Beatles and like me, makes sense that they still like me. But if I judge this compilation in Prog view... It is not a Prog compilation. Also if its intrinsic value is immense.

'1' - The Beatles (Compilation)

This is the essential collection of the Beatles' hits. It's quite impressive that 27 songs are able to fit onto this single CD.

While there is none of their progressive material on here, it has most of the songs that the band is best known for, including 'Day Tripper,' 'Yesterday' and 'Ticket To Ride.'

The compilation wasn't necessarily chosen by someone, but simply a collection of each of the band's number one hits. At a whopping 27, having a compilation of all of them was inevitable.

While the songwriting is phenomenal (for the most part) on this record and gives a listener a very good idea about what the Beatles are all about, I'm afraid I can't give this a five star rating, as it doesn't have any of my personal Beatles favourites on it, or any progressive songs. For 'rock music in general' however, and for those who don't necessarily care about 'album flow,' I recommend this as high as possible.

It's fall, 1963. I'm barely 14. Lights out at my house is 9pm but I usually lie in bed listening to my miniature transistor radio long after that hour because music is my escape from the humdrum of suburban life. One evening I'm tuned in to Russ "The Weird Beard" Knight's show on KLIF and he announces that he's about to play a record by a quartet from England that's unlike anything anyone listening has ever heard before. I am skeptical. He plays "I want to hold your hand." He's right. My life is forever changed.

The Beatles phenomenon will never be repeated. It was a cosmic confluence of right time, right place, right attitude and right haircuts, to be sure, but there was so much more to it than fortuitous coincidence. It required the added magical ingredients of immeasurable amounts of pure talent, unfettered creativity, limitless imagination and bold chutzpah to alter it from being just another fad into a historical line of demarcation on an equal par with Hiroshima. I can only speak from the perspective of an average American teenage boy of that era but my peers and I had just had our naïve beliefs about grownups blown to smithereens by the murder of JFK. On that fateful November Friday we collectively sensed that the truth wasn't being told to us and two days later we knew it never would. (Scoff if you like but one nut/one gun doesn't have a thousand loose ends.) Our future looked dark that season so when this fabulous ray of light came streaming through our tinny radio speakers we latched onto it for dear life. Here was something we could trust wholeheartedly. The healing power of rock & roll. The swine in Washington could take their filthy politics and shove them where the sun don't shine. This new music was going to deliver us from evil and it was exclusively OURS. Keep your Sinatra and your Elvis. We don't need 'em. We've got The Beatles and they've got us. Later, gators.

"Whoop de doo, old geezer," you may be saying to the screen. And that's okay. You have the right to feel patronized but that's not my intent. Like so many things, I guess you had to be there. In that case I present "1" as concrete evidence to the magnitude of what the Fab Four accomplished. Facts don't lie. Greatest hits packages are a dime a dozen yet only a few contain a number one single, if at all. This has 27. From a 7 year span. Unreal. And when traveling down this aural highway even the most jaded of critic must concede the unmatched influence these songs had on musical as well as societal trends in that tumultuous decade. It's plain as the freckled nose on your face. Radio was the weathervane of those times and no matter what the elder program directors thought, they had to play whatever The Beatles put out. The public appetite for them was insatiable and there was no alternate source. We had TV, of course, but they only showcased bands that'd made it big on the airwaves first. Top 40 radio ruled and these tunes became the consciousness of a generation by default. Every new release sounded nothing like what had come before and each number reinforced our notion that we could and should think for ourselves, not just shuffle along with the accepted norm. So, what's this all got to do with prog? Everything. The Beatles sowed and cultivated the mindset that gave young musicians the courage and means to consider and explore all possibilities. John, Paul, George and Ringo made progressive rock inevitable.

"1" encapsulates 1963-1970 in a nutshell (or, as Ian Anderson would say, in a warm sporran).

Phase One: "Love Me Do," "From Me to You," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Can't Buy me Love." Ridiculously simple fare, right? Well, after years of being beaten down by the likes of Herb Alpert, Pat Boone and Jan & Dean these songs were akin to "Close to the Edge" in comparison. The unbridled, aggressive enthusiasm these tunes contain heralded an era of puberty-fueled freedom heretofore unknown by our ancestors. Who cared if they only sang about love? It was all we needed.

Phase Two: "A Hard Day's Night," "I Feel Fine," "Eight Days a Week," "Ticket to Ride" and "Help!" Once our initial mass euphoria slacked off a bit they felt compelled to clue us in on a glimpse of reality. Since she's telling all the world that her baby buys her diamond rings, you know, you're going to have to work hard for a living for longer hours than you prefer yet don't be shocked if she flags down a train and leaves you high and dry one day and it devastates your psyche so much that you need therapy to recover.

Phase Three: "Yesterday," "Day Tripper," "We Can Work it Out," "Paperback Writer" and "Yellow Submarine." Once you get past your sappy yearning for the past when love was such an easy game to play you'll realize that chicks can be fickle as hell and it takes a lot of compromising to find compatibility with one and then when you get married your clinging wife won't understand that all you want to do is hang out with the friends who live next door and share funny cigarettes with tapered ends.

Phase Four: "Eleanor Rigby," "Penny Lane," "All You Need is Love," "Hello, Goodbye" and "Lady Madonna." It's becoming evident that all the lonely people are always going to be with us no matter what so we might as well turn on and dream of utopia because there's nothing you can do that can't be done and the planet doesn't really know if it's coming or going half the time and, anyway, did you think that money was heaven sent?

Phase Five: "Hey Jude," "Get Back," "The Ballad of John and Yoko," "Something" and "Come Together." Yo, dude, things didn't work out like you hoped so let's begin to make it better by returning to our California grass roots before they crucify us all in Vietnam and, by the way, if you're asking me if love will grow I don't know because I've got joo joo eyeballs.

Phase Six: "Let it Be" and "The Long and Winding Road." We're outa here, kids, but we'll leave you with a few tips. When you find yourself in trouble you can always go to your creator who'll tell you to leave things you can't control anyway alone already, get off your pity potty and get on with your life's journey. You ain't got it so bad, bucko.

Another point to ponder with "1" is that you didn't have to be a fan to know these songs by heart. You really had no choice. They were like the air you breathed. There's no semi- obscure album cuts on here (although that's where you'll find The Beatles' clever prog muse at her most innovative and productive) because every one of these #1 singles spent most of their allotted time spinning in heavy rotation as they beamed out from even the most remote of transmitters. They resonated throughout the globe. They served as the soundtrack for the common everyman who was coming alive in the 60s and, as I have tried to document with a dash of dry wit, their omnipresence became a running lyrical commentary, if not a major instigator, of the wholesale changes that were occurring all around him in that heady era. I know of what I speak. All I can say is that, despite all the craziness, you would've loved it there. It was a trip.

How many number 1's you say?!

Yes, all 27 of the chart-topping efforts from the Fab Four are accumulated here on this handy collection. If you were to combine the sales of each track, it probably works out as one of the most best-selling compilations in history. And because it's made solely of no. 1's, any listener (from screaming fan-girl to aborigine caveman) will have been unable to avoid during their lifetime at least half of the present songs, making it already very familiar.

The main advantage of owning this compilation, is that often the Beatles would release singles and then fail to include these songs on their actual albums, making it difficult to hear every song in one place; a problem eradicated by providing every stand-alone chart-topper in one place on this album. I'm not certain, but I would guess that having this collection, as well as every Beatles album, would cover every song the band has ever outputted.

The content doesn't really require description, other than that it successfully spans the whole career of these Liverpudlians (proving how conveniently frequent their position at number 1 was), and the sound is no different to the original recordings, I think. So, while not really relevant to a prog collection, this album is a must for Beatles fans. The only trouble is that you can't play "guess the chart position" while listening to it!

I think this compilation is essential for any Beatles fan, but it is by no means definitive. This album shows the hit-single side of the Beatles, and many of the songs are phenomenal, but it doesn't break into their creative and progressive side as on Sgt. Pepper and the White Album. That being said, it's still definitely worth picking up. Even as the songs progress chronologically, it's easy to see how the Beatles went from a British pop band to incredible innovators and musicians. Again, this is a wonderful compilation, but don't think that this is all the Beatles are capable of.

Rating: 9/10

This is one of the best compilations featuring the number one classics, many of which are only available on compilations, never released on studio albums. So it is difficult to rate this as anything under 4 stars as the songs are absolutely essential to the Beatles repertoire. In essence the songs come from all of the studio albums and there are none that are anything less than legendary.

The album begins with the early phase with the raw production of Love Me Do, From Me To You, and the smash hit She Loves You. It settles after the usual tracks on every compilation, into the better period when the band developed into proto prog such as Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, All You Need Is Love, and The Ballad Of John And Yoko. Of the 27 tracks perhaps the best come last in the form of the mystique of Come Together, Paul's ballad and best song from the last album, Let It Be, and finally ending with the soulful lament The Long And Winding Road.

Overall this is one of the great Beatles comps and it was a massive success in 2000, actually living up to it's title staying at number one on the charts for many weeks.

The compilation "1" collects all 45 rpm discs of the Beatles that have reached the number 1 in the English or US sales charts. Putting together the numbers one reached in the UK and in the USA, you can also insert in this album "Eight Days A Week", "Yesterday" and "The Long and Winding Road", released as singles only in America.

It should also be noted that in three cases the Beatles released 45 laps without sides B ie with two sides A. This is the case of "Day Tripper/ We Can Work It Out", "Penny Lane/ Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Something/Come Together". In these three cases, compilation "1" has inserted all sides A with the exception of "Strawberry Fields Forever", and this is a great displeasure for me. The fact remains that it is still a CD of about 80 minutes, and with no less than 27 songs: perhaps the duration of the disc was already excessive.

In any case, apart from this painful exception, the compilation follows in a very coherent way its purpose of grouping every side A of the 45 rpm discs that have reached the first place on the charts in UK or USA and therefore comes out a record of musical value (there are mostly songs from the period 1963-66, when the Beatles brought out many singles), and commercial and historical value.

Vote album: 9. Rating: Five Stars.