If you’re a fan of The Beatles in anything more than a casual capacity you can guarantee three things: 1) You’ll constantly find new reasons to love the songs you’ve heard nine million times; 2) People will always accuse you of being lame and unremarkable; and 3) You’ll buy all of their albums roughly 16 times apiece. Yes of course you already own all the albums; yes, of course you’re going to buy them whenever they remaster them again. The latest of these reissues comes for their troubled final (released) studio album, 1970’s Let It Be.
The Fab Four are the most influential popular band of the 20th Century (deal with it), and even though they only existed for about a decade, they released an astounding amount of material. Twelve studio albums, 13 extended plays (EPs), including one double EP, and 22 singles. 213 songs, most of them outright bangers.
Let It Be definitely feels like an outlier in their incredible catalog. The band recorded the album in fits and starts after the tumultuous recording of their self-titled double album (a.k.a. The White Album). So fraught were these sessions that the band shipped off the master recordings to America for famed record producer and future murderer Phil Spector to finish. Though he produced the initial record, Let It Be became the only Beatles album without George Martin as credited producer.
Apple Records
Since the album came out only a few months after the band’s announced breakup, people felt sad. Critics gave it a mixed reaction. It definitely feels a bit all over the place. But! It gave us some absolute all-timers, including “Get Back,” “Two of Us,” “The Long and Winding Road,” and of course “Let It Be.”
This new stereo remix of the original album will also feature the previously unreleased mix of Get Back, the original version of the album which Glyn Johns mixed. That one omits “Across the Universe” but includes “Don’t Let Me Down,” one of the best late-period songs in the catalog. In addition to the two complete versions of the album, you’ll also get fun outtakes and studio chatter.
The album will come out in October, just ahead of the premiere of Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated Get Back documentary series which will premiere on Disney+ in November. So, I guess, just get right with the inevitability of buying this if you like The Beatles. Darn it all.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
