Overrated and underrated Albums | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

meanmistermustard said
With Pepper its the whole package and more. People talk about the cover, the inner sleeve with the cutouts, the lyrics, the concept, but it was so so so much more. It aligned with and fit perfectly with society and where people were in the US and UK, read the related section of Cant Buy Me Love by Jonathan Gould and you begin to get a sense of just how much of an effect this album had.

Yes the songs arent the best the beatles put out there and its not their best album song by song compared to others but there is far more to it than meets the eye.

Going by songs its overrated, going by its impact and social relevance its not.

I’ll agree with you on this.  Maybe the extravagant packaging and the unheard-of-back-then 10-month gap between albums blinded people to the core fact that this is not the best batch of songs with which the group would ever come up.  But the album still ends up at the top of most ‘Best Albums Ever’ lists.  You’d think after all this time the music would carry the most weight. 

As for Only A Northern Song , i think it was in LITMW where George Martin told George it wasnt a great song, more a dirge, and that he could do better. George H went off and wrote Within You, Without You. Its a better song and OANS doesnt work as part of Pepper; its an ok song made better by being on a throwaway album of oddsorts.

I don’t think “Only A Northern Song ” would’ve sounded that out of place on Sgt. Pepper ; not any more than Within You, Without You” does, anyway.  It would’ve surpassed “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds ” as the album’s most psychedelic track, but that’s about it.  And, sure, its more experimental nature made it easier to cast aside for Yellow Submarine , but I don’t consider it a complete toss-off like “All Together Now ” or, to a lesser extent, “Hey Bulldog .” And “It’s All Too Much ” is sooo not a throaway tune it’s not even funny.  I still consider it the group’s all-time most criminally underrated song.

Would George have had more songs on Pepper if he had written more?  Who knows?  He did have a few things lingering in 1967 which finally appeared on ATMP , maybe he didnt offer them to four for some reason or John and Paul rejected them.There was no set rule and i think if he had had anything else at the time of Rubber Soul Wait would have been ditched (same goes for Paul and John), and he does have 3 lead vocals on With The Beatles and Revolver so 2 was never the standard.

I know there was likely never a quota for George’s contributions; the ‘one song per side’ that ultimately happened may have just been coincidental.  But it still annoys me to no end that even when it was becoming evident that George was starting to catch up to John and Paul songwriting-wise (and let’s face it — we now know that 1968-70 was easily George’s most prolific period as a songwriter), they still basically treated him like a second-class bandmember.  I mean, if Paul really thought “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer ” was a better choice to be on Abbey Road than, say, “Let It Down ,” he’s off his rocker.    I’m really kinda pissed that several of the songs on All Things Must Pass  the predated the group’s break-up ended up never being recorded by them.

Even though Pepper is not overrated (in my opinion), I can see why people think so. You have to hear it several times before you appreciate it. It took me a while until I realized how good it really was. Before I didn’t really get it. In other news, With the Beatles is underrated.