The Beatles 1967 Magical Mystery Tour

This is not really an album. Half EP, half singles compilation. But it has the best set of songs apart from Abbey Road. There are only three weak tracks: "Flying", "Blue Jay Way" and "Baby You're a Rich Man". The rest is very good or simply awesome. It has "I Am the Walrus" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". Even the McCartney stuff is good: "M.M.T.", "The Fool on the Hill", "Penny Lane". This has an alternative, underground, dark flavour like no other Beatles album has, not even the White Album. It's psychedelic but not happily colourful. The colours are there, but it's a bad trip.

The Beatles 1965 Rubber Soul

Only four tracks can be rescued without hesitation from this album: "Nowhere Man", "Drive My Car", "Norwegian Wood" and "Girl". Lennon owns the songwriting.

"Nowhere Man" is one of the greatest songs ever written by Man. Everybody knows it. The introductory vocals tell you this is going to be an amazing piece of music. The guitar phrases are what they should be. The vocal harmonies make sense. And the lyrics are clever, too; something not so easy to find in a Beatles song.

The rest of the album goes from conventional to unlistenable.

"In My Life" is supposed to be by many the best track in the album and one of the best songs ever. I guess it could have been some of that. But the pseudo-harpsichord that plays for about half a minute and disappears hurriedly is an obvious flaw. It's supposed to make the song "serious" by bringing baroque influences to it but it's so shallow that it only makes the track ridiculous and ruins it.

Anyway, the production is far better than Revolver's. This is as good as Sgt. Pepper's.

The Beatles 1966 Revolver

"Taxman" is great. "Tomorrow Never Knows" is great too, even though it should go on for more than three minutes. The rest is not great and, except for some moments here and there, but not "everywhere" (I'm sorry, I know it's not funny), is very bad. The production, unlike the production of many other Beatles albums and specially the album that was to come, failed horribly. This doesn´t apply only to the two songs I mentioned first. The attempts to make the music more rock-like, more classical-like, more eastern-like failed all to an astronomical extent. They were too shallow, too bland, too timid.

Memphis La Blusera 1988 Medias Negras

"Háganse a un lado" and "Esto pasa ahora" are the only shitty tracks in this album. The rest is very good, including classics like "La bifurcada", "Medias de seda negra", "Montón de nada". The sound is probably the result of the intervention of a producer who thought extreme 80's instrumentation and arrangements would make the album more commercial. That should have ended in disaster considering this is a boogie band, but curiously the result, though strange and bizarre, is not bad. The lyrics are very good. Life is seen from a male sexist but at the same time clever point of view.

Pink Floyd 1973 The Dark Side of the Moon

The topic of the lyrics and the mood of the music may seem a bit overly kitschly romantic, but they work well. Isolation, lunacy, aging, materialism. All in all, those are grim big realities of life.

The production and the recording quality are exceptional and that allows the songs to shine at their maximum capacity. I like the fact that they brought saxophone and a gospel voice in a progressive rock album. I also love the change of time signature in Money, as much as I love it in "Fairies Wear Boots" by Black Sabbath. There is no "filler" in this album. The instrumental tracks give dynamics to it (each one placed halfway each side).

The bridges between the songs are weak, though. It makes sense that they are blended, because that makes it possible to sustain the atmosphere. But they couldn't connect them smoothly. "Eclipse" comes more unexpectedly than any other.

The Beatles 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The first three tracks and the last track are good. The rest is mediocre or simply bad. 14'32'' of good music over 39'7'' of total playing time means that only 40% percent of the album is good. Notice how the good music was placed at the beginning and at the end of the record. The last A-side track and the first B-side track are the worst. That gives us a clue concerning that the artists knew the real quality of what they had done. Besides, the only four good tracks that I've mentioned are the only four tracks from this album that were included in the Blue Album compilation. What makes this album special is that the production of every second of music is amazing. With the production of this album any Beatles album could be Sgt. Pepper's.

The Beatles 1967-1970 [Blue Album]

At this moment I'm quite sure Abbey Road and this are all you need from The Beatles.