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The best track from the record is "I Feel Fine" IMO, but as a whole, BFS would have to be the weakest of the studio albums.
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I'm going to assume you're referring to the US vinyl version of
BFS, because IIRC, "I Feel Fine" was a non-album single. Sorry, I grew up in the CD era, so my familiarity with the American vinyl is minimal. I agree, though: "I Feel Fine" is a pretty cool song; dunno if it's the first use of feedback like Lennon always said, but it's a great rocker either way.
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Let's face it, some record has to be last on the list, and I feel that this one is it. What about you?
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My choice for "worse Beatles album" would have to be
Let It Be. While there are a few great songs on there, the record just feels to lackluster to me, for a number of reasons:
1) I listened to
LIB again recently and noticed how sloppy and unenthusiastic the instrumentation was. "I've Got a Feeling" and "I Me Mine" are good examples of this. A lot of the music doesn't really sound like the Beatles to me; it sounds more like John, Paul or George singing lead while a trio of somewhat incompetent session players back him up.
2) A friend of mine has a massive 10-disc box set containing many outtakes, demos and alternate takes from the
LIB sessions, and from the stuff I've listened to, there was a lot of great material that could've been put on the album instead of the more filler-like official tracks ("Dig It," "The One After 909," "Maggie May," etc.). Even some of the tracks on
Anthology 3 were superior to what was on
LIB.
3) Another reason I'm not a big fan of
LIB is because of the somewhat hypocritical nature of the album. This record was advertised as an album that was just like their earliest material, which meant no overdubs, among other things. There's nothing wrong with going back to your musical roots, but don't ignore the concept by hiring Mr. Wall-of-Sound himself, Phil Spector, to work on some of the tracks. The unaltered version of "The Long and Winding Road" (on
Anthology 3) is vastly superior, and should have been on the original album.
4) Additionally, I like the single versions of "Let It Be" and "Get Back" more than their album counterparts. That's not really a criticism, just a personal preference.
5) Finally, I kind of wish the band had used the original cover for the album: an updated version of the
Please Please Me cover. Just would've given a nice visual sense of closure to their career.
Don't get me wrong though. I don't hate
Let It Be; for all the problems I have with it, it's a pretty good listen. And in the Beatles universe, "worse" translates into "better than some people's best." Considering how fractured the group's relationships with each other were at the time, it's a miracle this album even got released. I just prefer to think of
Abbey Road as their "true" final album and view
LIB as an interesting experiment.
Ah, thanks for letting me know about the McLachlan cover. With a voice like hers and great source material like "Blackbird," it'd pretty hard to screw it up. Nice to know she did a great job.
BTW: I asked this question in the "signature song" thread but didn't get a response, so I'll ask again. Ric, where did you get that drawing of the Beatles that is on your sig file?
