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The Beatles: A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

A Hard Day's Night is a crucial inflection point in the Beatles' career. Coinciding with their leaving Liverpool and moving to London, this could easily have been their first step on a road of crowd-pleasing predictability: Instead, both film and this soundtrack album are a testament to how fabulous pop can be when you take care over doing it. The album is most famous now for being the first all-original record the band put out - and their only all Lennon-McCartney LP. The dominant sound of the album is the Beatles in full cry as a pop band - with no rock'n'roll covers to remind you of their roots you're free to take the group's new sound purely on its own modernist terms. All of the disparate influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright, joyous, original sound filled with ringing guitars and irresistible melodies. They had certainly found their musical voice before, but A Hard Day's Night is where it became mythical. In just a few years, they made more adventurous and accomplished albums, but this is the sound of Beatlemania in all of its giddy glory - for better and for worse, this is the definitive Beatles album, the one every group throughout the ages has used as a blueprint.

Tracklist:

1.A Hard Day's 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

Lineup:

John Lennon - vocals, acoustic, rhythm and lead guitars, piano, harmonica, Paul McCartney - vocals, bass guitar, piano, cowbell, George Harrison - vocals, lead (six and twelve string) and acoustic guitars, Ringo Starr - drums, percussion. Additional musicians: George Martin - piano, production

Release date: July 10, 1964