Masterpiece #1: Half movie music, all Lennon-McCartney
The Beatles released four soundtrack albums in their career. All the others (Help, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and the USA version of this one) consist only half with songs from the movie. The other half is either vacuous soundtrack instrumentals or else filled-in with previously leftover songs.
But the UK version of "A Hard Days Night" is quite an exception. It could be described as the most consistent and concentrated album of pure Beatles music that they ever did.
There are no covers. It's all originals, and since George had not yet blossomed as a songwriter, its all Lennon-McCartney. All of it is still largely the same style as their very first music, but hewed to a fine perfection. At this stage, John and Paul are still more together than separate, and show their individual styles only as they always had or in other subtle ways. They hadn't yet tried to branch out onto any creative limbs.
There's also not much difference between the songs from the movie on Side One and the remaining songs on Side Two (to use vinyl parlance). There is no distraction regarding whether to include singles because the only two UK singles ("Hard Days Night" and "Can't Buy Me Love") are from the movie. Most other Beatles albums have some twist or anomaly, and often many of them. On this album, all the songs are cut from the same cloth. Clearly, if you don't like "A Hard Days Night", you don't like The Beatles. Is there anybody out there like that?
1 - A Hard Days Night
2 - I Should Have Known Better
3 - If I Fell
4 - I'm Happy Just to Dance With You
5 - And I Love Her
6 - Tell Me Why
7 - Can't Buy Me Love
8 - Any Time At All
9 - I'll Cry Instead
10 - Things We Said Today
11 - When I Get Home
12 - You Can't Do That
13 - I'll Be Back
All songs Lennon-McCartney
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