95 Theses on The Beatles

Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, Mr. Matthew Walther, high-school dropout and associate editor at Rosslyn, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence via Twitter. In the name of &c. &c. &c.

1. The best Beatles album is the Capitol folk-rock version of Rubber Soul. It is basically perfect, track for track (though I wish they had found room for "Nowhere Man"). The mono, stereo, and Dave Dexter ultra-reverb stereo mixes are all excellent in their own ways—but the mono is the best. Fab Four enthusiasts who are also Japanophiles (the two interests tend to cross-fertilize very well) know that translators used the wrong kanji for "Norwegian Wood" and ended up suggesting a vast primordial forest rather than cheap paneling. "That song can make me feel so sad," says a character in Haruki Murakami's novel of the same name. "I don't know, I guess I imagine myself wandering in a deep wood. I'm all alone and it's cold and dark, and nobody comes to save me." I certainly know what she means. One of the most winsome errors in the history of translation.

2. The second-best Beatles album is A Hard Day's Night. The band's two best periods are the early Beatlemania-era singles and the mid-career pre-psychedelic phase in which they branched out without becoming pretentious or (too) whimsical. A Hard Day's Night falls right in the middle of these. Avoid the United Artists soundtrack version, which includes pointless instrumentals from the film—one of the best comedies of the '60s—though the album cover is nice. Please do not bother with the stereo mix.

3. The third-best Beatles album is the mono Japanese version of Meet the Beatles! I suppose there is probably a stereo mix of this somewhere, but don't bother. There is simply no other way to hear "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

4. The fourth-best Beatles album is either Revolver or the "White Album." I say the latter whenever I have just heard "Tomorrow Never Knows" and the former after being reminded of the existence of "Revolution No. 9."

5. The best argument for the former is that it expands upon—without ever excelling—what the band did with Rubber Soul (the "real" Parlaphone version of the album, not the better but chronologically misleading Capitol version) without going off the deep end quite.

6. The best argument for the latter is the obvious one, namely that it has everything: doo-wop, proto-metal, Tin Pan alley and musical hall, Beach boys pastiche, western ballad, soul, folk, reggae, Lennon's strongest ballads and confessionals, McCartney's most endearing love songs (including one about a dog), self-parody.

7. George Martin was wrong to suggest that the "White Album" should have been to cut to a single LP. There are too many strong tracks, and part of the fun is sifting through it and finding different things to enjoy over the years.

8. The best side of the "White Album" is side three because it is the only one without an obvious dud, followed by side two, which features just a single dud.

9. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is probably the best song on the "White Album." Paul shares this opinion, which pretty much settles it for me.

10. The worst song on the "White Album" is "Good Night," but it was obviously intended to be.

11. Far and away the most overrated song on the album is "Glass Onion." The moronic self-referential lyrics are the least bad thing about it. The fact that Harrison praised this track on more than one occasion makes me question his taste forever. "Back in the U.S.S.R.," while not quite as bad, is even more overplayed, alas. (When I was a high-school freshman, I wrote an essay comparing the latter, which I described as a "tankie anthem," favorably to the Stones's "Street Fighting Man," which I still consider a paeon to counterrevolution. I was only sort of taking the piss. I got an A.)

12. The most underrated cut on the album is almost certainly "Sexy Sadie." My paternal grandparents had a dog that I hated for most of my childhood called Sadie. When I was 12, my cousin and I told my brothers that it was about her, which they found hysterically funny. Now I realize that it is one of their best plastic soul cuts, an obvious tribute to Smokey Robinson. Most people know that it is about the Maharishi: Lennon's working lyrics are unprintable on a family website, but do Google them.

13. It's a shame that George Jones or someone in that line never covered "Don't Pass Me By." It wouldn't have been a classic single or anything, but those guys were always in need of filler for their LPs. It would have made Ringo's year, I'm sure. The song itself is a missed opportunity. I wish they'd had Billy Preston playing organ for them by the time they recorded it and found someone to do steel guitar.

14. The mono mix of the album, never until recently released in the United States, is in many ways superior to the familiar stereo. It is nice not to have to hear the silly and primitive panning at the beginning of "Back in the U.S.S.R.," though it is sad to miss out on "I've got blisters on my fingers" at the end of "Helter Skelter." Track it down—in fact, do yourself a favor and buy the insanely cheap (considering everything you're getting) 14-LP Beatles in Mono box set for around $330.

15. Eric Clapton and Billy Preston should have joined the band after the "White Album" and been around for Let It Be.

16. Ditto Harry Nilsson after the recording—but not the release of—Let It Be, by which time Clapton would have been done.

17. Ringo should have been forced to accept that the band would not record his songs—perhaps in exchange for more money from some other source—or given the boot. There was scarcely a drummer in the world who would not have dropped everything to play with The Beatles in 1969.

18. There is a parallel universe in which Paul and Ringo have both left and the band, led by Lennon, Harrison, Nilsson, and someone like Ginger Baker, make the two- or three-best power-pop albums of all time.

19. Please Please Me is more iconic than great, but it's not a bad record. In a way it is a forerunner of the "White Album" in the sense that it is also all over the place: R&B, show tunes, girl groups, teenage balladry, straight-up rock. And then there is the extraordinary fact that it was recorded in a day. When you consider this and the short length of everything here, it's tempting to think of it as a kind of proto-Guided by Voices record—but surely that analogy works better the other way around, as Uncle Bob would readily admit.

20. I hesitate constantly about not ranking Beatles for Sale ahead of one or both of those two.

21. Side one opens with three of the band's best songs, "No Reply," "Baby's in Black," and "I'm a Loser," and features one of the two best covers they ever recorded, their version of Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music."

22. There is a sense in which side two is a bit of a comedown. But "Eight Days a Week" is the song that played the first time I ever danced with a girl, so I'll love it forever. "Words of Love" is an excellent reading of a Buddy Holly classic.

23. I also love the cover photo, which suggests autumn, melancholy, wistfulness, haunting beauty—everything that those first three brilliant originals are about. It's almost a shame that the enterprising geniuses at Capitol did not hold off and invent an album featuring those tracks and a handful from Rubber Soul that fit the mood: "Norwegian Wood," "You Won't See Me," "I'm Looking Through You," "In My Life." It might have been the best thing this side of Astral Weeks.

24. Speaking of covers, the best cover performed by the Beatles is either "Please Mr. Postman" or "Rock and Roll Music." Lennon had the best voice for 50s rock and R&B tunes. It is a shame that he lost some of his energy by the time he decided to record an entire album of them in the 70s—though I still like his version of "Peggy Sue" from Rock and Roll. Paul, by comparison, does an awful job with "Long Tall Sally."

25. The worst cover the band ever did is probably "A Taste of Honey," as anyone who has ever listened to Barbra Streisand's debut album will tell you. But Ringo's vocals—to say nothing of the totally out-of-place jangling guitars—on "Act Naturally" come pretty close.

26. Given their interest in the genre and their willingness to pilfer Dylan for ideas, it is a bit strange that the band never had a proper country-rock phase. This is a testament to their creativity—after Sgt. Pepper they would never stick to an album-length concept again—and a very good thing because none of them had the voice for it.

27. The worst cover of a Beatles song is a tie between every track on the soundtrack to the failed Sean Penn Oscar vehicle I Am Sam. Eddie Vedder mumbling and rasping like a lumbersexual café singer in "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"? Sheryl Crow butchering "Mother Nature's Son"? A person called Howie Day whining through "Help"? The Vines making "I'm Only Sleeping" sound like a late-career Oasis bomb? The 13 additional unlistenable tracks? Take your pick—or don't. A close number-two is the Aerosmith version of "Come Together."

28. The best cover of a Beatles song is either Emmylou Harris's version of "For No One" from Pieces of the Sky or Wilson Pickett's blistering reading of "Hey Jude" with Duane Allman on guitar.

29. Judy Collins's "In My Life" from her album of the same name and The Beach Boys's "Tell Me Why" on Beach Boys' Party! are also first-rate.

30. Two Beatles covers that are superior to the originals are Ray Charles's version of "The Long and Winding Road" and Fats Domino's "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey."

31. The best cover of a Beatles solo tune is Billy Preston's nearly contemporary recording of "My Sweet Lord."

32. Let It Be is a much better record than most people will allow. How many albums feature three number-one hits—out of only 10 real songs—none of which is even the best song on its respective side?

33. Let It Be… Naked is the triumph of a slick marketing campaign in Rolling Stone and elsewhere. Yes, it is wonderful to have "Don't Let Me Down" alongside other tracks from the Rooftop Concert and a slightly less awful version of "The Long and Winding Road." No, Phil Spector was not an idiot with no idea what he was doing when he added backing vocals to "Across the Universe," among other improvements.

34. The single worst thing about Let It Be… Naked is the removal of "Dig It" and "Maggie Mae" and the studio chatter that generations of fans have memorized effortlessly. If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say, "That was 'Can You Dig It' by Georgie Wood, and now we'd like to do 'Hark, the Angels Come,'" you don't actually love this band.

35. Let It Be has a wonderful cover, but the best thing about the LP other than the music is the liner notes: "This is a new phase BEATLES album…essential to the content of the film, LET IT BE was that they performed live for many of the tracks; in comes the warmth and the freshness of a live performance, as reproduced for disc by Phil Spector [sic throughout]." Because I always listen to my Japanese pressing, I like to pretend that this is a particularly unfortunate example of ESL.

36. Sgt. Pepper is a lot of fun—for children and teenagers. When you grow up, you realize that the cover is an eyesore and that everyone from The Zombies to Gandalf did psychedelia better. Not to know it note-for-note, however, is inexcusable.

37. When you're an adult, the best song on Pepper other than "A Day in the Life" is "Lovely Rita."

38. When you're a kid, it's "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite."

39. When you're a teenager, it's the title track—that dope fuzzbox, man.

40. The original Magical Mystery Tour EP is not good. The LP version is redeemed only by the tacked-on singles from side two.

41. "Flying" would be an excellent song to play over the haunting and whimsical credits of a Miranda July film.

42. "All You Need is Love" is not only an awful song—it has the second-worst guitar solo in rock after the one from "We're Not Gonna Take It."

43. The Yellow Submarine EP is absolutely wonderful. "Hey Bulldog" is a delight and "It's All Too Much" is one of George's best.

44. Help is definitely the worst real Beatles album, with no close competition. Everything on it is garbage except the title track, "Ticket to Ride," "Yesterday," "I've Just Seen a Face," and "It's Only Love." The first three are number-one hits you can listen to on Mono Masters and the last two are on the Capitol Rubber Soul. "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is okay, I guess.

45. With the Beatles is the most underrated Beatles album. You sometimes hear of supposed fans who have never even heard "All I've Got to Do," which is unforgivable. "All My Loving" and "Don't Bother Me" are also total bangers.

46. The suite on Abbey Road is slightly overrated. The best songs on the record are "I Want You (She's So Heavy") and "Oh! Darling."

47. The best individual selection from the side-two suite is "Golden Slumbers."

48. "Yellow Submarine" and "Come Together" are tied for the distinction of Beatles song I would be most happy never to hear again. There are worse ones, but I have not exhausted them yet.

49. Paul's solo catalogue is the best, which isn't saying much to be honest, followed by John's. Both John and George showed more post-Beatles promise and their heights are, well, higher. But Macca was the one who followed through most consistently.

50. Paul's best solo tune is "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey." To dismiss it as whimsy is to miss the point. Whimsy is what he did best.

51. Simili modo, Ram is easily Paul's best solo album, followed by McCartney and then Band on the Run. The rest range from mixed bags to utterly negligible.

52. "Mull of Kintyre" is a delight and anyone who disagrees is a vicious cynic.

53. Ditto "The Girl is Mine."

54. "Wonderful Christmastime" and "Ebony and Ivory" are, however, two of the worst songs ever recorded.

55. All Things Must Pass is the best Beatles solo album. If Harrison had continued making music like this, there would have been no need for Badfinger.

56. I have nothing contrarian to say about sides five and six, the five-part "Apple Jam": they really are bad, but not so bad that they come close to altering the obvious verdict about the other four.

57. My knowledge of Ringo's discography is not exhaustive enough to say for sure which of his albums is the absolute worst. But one of those is the worst Beatles solo outing.

58. His first, the standards album Sentimental Journey, is awful enough—though in my opinion its badness is more than made up for by the rumor that he recorded it for his mother, who liked that sort of thing.

59. Conventional wisdom says that "It Don't Come Easy" is at least a decent song. However, conventional wisdom is wrong. I wish I could be kinder to poor Ringo, but I can't. Peace, Richie!

60. John's best solo outing is the compilation record Shaved Fish. If it had been a double LP with "Oh Yoko," "Mother," "Jealous Guy," "Well Well Well," and "Look at Me," it would have everything you need to hear.

61. I sometimes think the most important thing John did post-Beatles—his best solo single, "Instant Karma!," was recorded before the breakup—was producing Harry Nilsson's massively underrated Pussy Cat.

62. I'm not joking about "Instant Karma!" When I was 11 I would listen to it on repeat for hours before drifting off into a sleep full of golden visions. It is the jolliest, most optimistic pop song you'll ever hear. I have no idea what it's about.

63. John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band is one of those records that we appreciate more for what it made possible than for the music on it. I would be very, very happy to go the rest of my life without ever listening to "Working Class Hero" or, especially, "God" ever again.

64. It's not all garbage. As far as proto-lo-fi classics go, it is hard to improve on "My Mummy's Dead." Those 50 or so seconds give me chills every time.

65. "Well Well Well" is also basically perfect. Johnny Thunders should have covered it.

66. If for some reason you feel the need to listen to "God," track down the more honest demo version in which Lennon admits that he "just believe[s] in me" without tacking on Yoko.

67. Double Fantasy is not a great comeback record. It is unlistenable tosh.

68. Remember what Shaw said? "If you don't begin to be a revolutionist at the age of 20 then at 50 you will be an impossible old fossil." This applies to one's favorite Beatle. If it isn't John when you are a teenager, you will grow up to be a soulless functionary of the higher liberalism whose horizons do not extend much beyond good brunch places and received wisdom about fracking—but when you grow up, it had better be Paul, or so I used to think. I'm now solidly in the Lennon camp again.

69. The kind of person who prefers George is either the one kid in your high school who messes around with guitar who will actually grow up to make music for a living or your mom whose favorite Beatles song is "Here Comes the Sun."

70. Liking Ringo best is harmless contrarianism easily understandable after only a single viewing of A Hard Day's Night. My sister is a Ringo partisan.

71. Rubber Soul has the best album cover, followed by Beatles for Sale, A Hard Day's Night, Revolver, and With the Beatles, in that order.

72. The album with the worst cover by an enormous margin is Magical Mystery Tour, which might be the ugliest record around. All four members of the band look exactly like the infamous dog man from the scariest scene in The Shining, which I suppose is a kind of achievement.

73. The second worst album cover is Sgt. Pepper, which, like everything about the record, is neat when you're young and boring after about age 14.

74. The coolest-looking Beatle is almost always Paul, especially with his beard on the cover of Let It Be.

75. The lamest-looking is typically poor Ringo.

76. On the whole, though, the band almost always had a great look. They were best in their middle period when their hair was still medium-length and their clothes not too out there. They were pretty cool in their matching suits in the early days, and they basically invented rock-star chic starting in '68.

77. They did look uniformly awful in their psych period. Lennon's moustache and short hair combo were especially embarrassing.

78. How cool they looked and how good their album covers were tracks more or less closely with how good their music was.

79. Songs by Beatles about other Beatles are almost uniformly bad, notwithstanding the (real or merely perceived) dis tracks on Ram. "How Do You Sleep?", "Early 1970," "Dear Friend," "Here Today," a track about George the name of which I cannot recall from a Ringo solo album released in the early 2000s. Garbage.

80. This was true even when the band was still together: see "Glass Onion," which, as I've said, is just awful.

81. The best Beatles song—you didn't think I would get to this, did you—really is "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The fact that Yoko shares this opinion does not change my mind. The chorus contains the single most decent intention a young person can have for another. Everything—the performance, the arrangement, the recording—is sublime, transcendent, recalling the way in which romantic love analogizes—if that's the word I want—God's love for all of us. The best way to make sense of the song is, I think, to read Charles Williams's neglected classic The Figure of Beatrice.

82. The next 50 (or so: I can't count) best, in no particular order, are "Strawberry Fields Forever," "No Reply," "She Loves You," "I'm a Loser," "Norwegian Wood," "And I Love Her," "In My Life," "Blackbird," "Happiness is a Warm Gun," "Hey Jude," "I'm Looking Through You," "From Me to You," "For No One," "Across the Universe," "Rain," "Eight Days a Week," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," "I've Got a Feeling," "If I Fell," "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You," "All I've Got to Do," "Wait," "Ticket to Ride," "I'm Only Sleeping," "I'm So Tired," "Dear Prudence," "Yesterday," "A Day in the Life," "Lovely Rita," "It's All Too Much," "Nowhere Man," "Eleanor Rigby," "Here, There and Everywhere," "Tell Me Why," "And Your Bird Can Sing," "I Feel Fine," "Let It Be," "Mother Nature's Son," Oh! Darling," "Helter Skelter," "You Won't See Me," "Here Comes the Sun," "I've Just Seen a Face," "I Should Have Known Better," "Please Please Me," "Get Back," "Penny Lane," "Girl," "Drive My Car," "Don't Let Me Down," and "With a Little Help From My Friends."

83. The worst Beatles number-one hit is "The Long and Winding Road."

84. The second-worst Beatles number-one hit is "Lady Madonna."

85. The so-called "Red Album" is great as a set of songs—and implicitly confirms my argument about Rubber Soul—but the mixes are, well, of mixed quality. "Love Me Do" deserves better than fake stereo and "Yellow Submarine" is only tolerable in mono, with the acoustic guitar sounding punchy instead of bright.

86. The "Blue Album" is garbage, but they were trying to collect singles. It deserves to be discarded solely on the basis of its canonization of "Octopus's Garden."

87. On the subject of mixes: Everyone knows that generally speaking, mono is better than stereo for virtually all the singles and albums up to the "White Album," including the 1968 double A-side "Hey Jude/Revolution." Rubber Soul is an exception.

88. Also: The Phil Spector LP mix of "Let It Be" is slightly better than the single version, though both are gorgeous.

89. John Lennon said once that while he thought highly of his Beatles-era songwriting, he was not satisfied with any of the recordings. This is true in the case of "Help," no mix of which is quite satisfactory. The U.S. LP version with the so-called "James Bond intro" is unlistenable. The Parlaphone stereo—yes, stereo—mix is the best thing going but it still sounds a bit thin to me.

90. Yoko hatred is both grossly misogynistic and grounded in the truth that she did in fact contribute more than any other person—except her husband—to the band's break-up. But holding it against her is childish.

91. Between the Boomer who claims to be bored of or even hate The Beatles, and the Boomer who actually listened to Herb Alpert and the Tiujanna Brass and never even owned a copy of the "White Album" but now has the entire discography on his iPhone and listens to every single NPR special about the band, it is easier to side with the former—but only barely so.

92. Young people who affect to hate The Beatles—unless they sincerely despise pop music and prefer hard bop or baroque or what have you—are fools who should not be given a hearing. It's very simple: If you really like popular music, which is not the same thing as being a tone-deaf person who finds the lyrics to the filth on today's Top 40 amusing and maybe thinking AC/DC is "cool," you like The Beatles.

93. There may be better ways to spend one's adolescence in this country than by obsessing over the lyrics of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and scribbling the band's name into notebooks instead of paying attention to whatever excruciating facts your science teacher is trying to impart to you—I'm just not aware of them.

94. It is important on the other hand to acknowledge that the album as an art form is taken too seriously even in the pop community. The fact that "Wichita Lineman" is rarely discussed in the same breath as Revolver is as sad as it is astounding.

95. Van Morrison, Sandy Denny, and Nick Drake made better "art," and I have myself been known to say that I prefer, depending on my mood, either The Kinks or Pavement—but no one can deny that the Fab Four are the greatest band in the history of post-war pop.

(Photos either AP, public domain, or property of author throughout.)