One (2000)


1.Love Me Do
2.From Me To You
3.She Loves You
4.I Want To Hold Your Hand
5.Can't Buy Me Love
6.A Hard Day's Night
7.I Feel Fine
8.Eight Days a Week
9.Ticket To Ride
10.Help!
11.Yesterday
12.Day Tripper
13.We Can Work It Out
14.Paperback Writer
15.Yellow Submarine
16.Eleanor Rigby
17.Penny Lane
18.All You Need Is Love
19.Hello, Goodbye
20.Lady Madonna
21.Hey Jude
22.Get Back
23.The Ballad of John and Yoko
24.Something
25.Come Together
26.Let it Be
27.The Long and Winding Road

 

Since the compact disc became the dominant form of music purchases in the late 1980's, there had never been a legitimate compilation of hits by The Bealtes. The "Red" and "Blue" albums were finally transferred to CD by the early 1990's, but the hefty price for 2 double disc sets was too much for many to bear. The "Anthology" series, as most everyone knew by now, was not a collection of "hits" but of alternative recordings and unreleased material throughout the band's history.

Of course, it's not an easy task to put out a "hits" package from these guys. There were so many songs through their eight year career that were so popular. Even if you could determine what should be represented, how do you get it all on only one disc? Fortunately somebody, somewhere, came up with a great idea.

It was decided that a package would be made available with a large sampling of their number one hits - and number one hits only. Of course, the collection was allowed a little liberty when the criteria used was broadened to UK releases or US releases, so if a song (Penny Lane, for example) only got to #2 in the UK, it was still justified to be featured here since it did top the charts in th US. Since it was custom for songs to be shorter in length in the glorious sixties, this allowed 27 songs to be featured here on only one disc.

Of course, even with a disc containing that much material, there are still some very popular Beatle songs that did reach #1 that aren't featured here. That may seem a slight gyp to some, but any other songs being added would force a second CD - and a much heftier price. So the one disc here can't be deemed complete, yet to look at the track list, you can take comfort to note that all of the band's phases and periods are represented quite fairly. It also takes reminding to remember that this band (as most artists in the sixties did) put out a large number of singles that weren't featured on any of the full length albums, so some albums in the band's catalog are ignored completely here. Again, that's just a testimony to the wealth of material that these guys had. Maybe one day there will be another 27 song CD released with another catchy name (How about "Beatles Classics?") with a dominant blue color to catch everything this one missed?


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