Album Review: Abbey Road [1969] #7

Moving down the top 10 and we reach the highest rated Beatles record on this chart. Not too surprising, it's of course Abbey Road, yet another iconic record on the top 10, with an album cover that's cemented itself in pop culture history alongside The Velvet Underground & Nico and The Dark Side Of The Moon.

I personally hold this record on par with Revolver, two of their in my opinion strongest records (neither being The Beatles' best work though) similarily built on simple pop songs with catchy melodies and a bunch of studio magic that makes them unique for their time and honestly quite innovative. Songs like Come Together and Something attempt to break the mold that the band previously had set for their kind of pop rock and they do a fine job at creating something unorthodox compared to their contemporaries.

Now a lot of credit that this record has taken should be given to their producer George Martin who had been the man turning the levers and the wheels for the band since the beginning of their career. Martin is often considered "the fifth Beatle" and rightfully so, Martin wasn't just any producer, he was the perfect fit for the band and the force that often drove them that extra mile, making tracks like Taxman and I'm Only Sleeping stand out from the previously worn mold of pop music.



This is in my opinion the time when Martin's work truly shone and most of the success of Abbey Road is definitely to be credited to George Martin, becoming one of the staple records cemented in pop culture history that still to this day is a known classic amongst young and old.

Unforunately Abbey Road suffers from a weak b-side. While the first half of the album is packed full with memorable songs like Come Together, Octopus' Garden, Something and Here Comes The Sun, the second half lacks the same momentum, energy and pillars of hit singles to lean on. It doesn't quite match the potential that the record had, containing a bunch of the bands' greatest singles and an unfortunate amount of songs that I personally don't think make the cut.

Abbey Road signaled the end of The Beatles' carreer, being the penultimate record coming in the year before Let It Be came and with it, the chapter that was The Beatles ended, This is also an contributing factor to the legacy of Abbey Road, an album which felt like a culmination of everything the band had worked for all coming together (heh) under the same roof. Let It Be might be The Beatles' encore, but Abbey Road was the finisher you'd been waiting to hear.

Abbey Road

The Beatles

7/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev