The Beatles’ eleventh studio album, Abbey Road, was released in 1966. Although Let It Be was the last album completed by the band before their breakup in April 1970, it was the last album the group started recording. On 26 September 1969, the album was released in the United Kingdom, and on 1 October 1969 in the United States. It reached number one in both countries. Mostly recorded between April, July and August 1969. The US chart-topping single from the album, “Something” / “Come Together“, was released in October.

Rock, pop, blues, singer-songwriter, and progressive rock are among the styles incorporated into Abbey Road, as well as Moog synthesizers and guitars played through a Leslie speaker unit. On side two, there is a long medley of songs that have subsequently been covered by other notable artists. The album was recorded in a more collegial atmosphere than the Get Back / Let It Be sessions earlier in the year, but there still were significant confrontations within the band, especially over Paul McCartney’s song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer“, and John Lennon didn’t perform on several tracks. McCartney left the group the following year, but Lennon’s resignation wasn’t publicly announced until the album was released.

It was an immediate commercial success, but received mixed reviews. Many critics found the production’s music unauthentic and criticized its artificial effects. In contrast, critics today consider the album one of the Beatles’ best and rank it among the greatest albums of all time. There are two songs on the album by George Harrison (“Something” and “Here Comes The Sun“) that have been regarded as some of the best written by him. In the history of recorded music, the album’s cover, which depicts the group crossing a zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, has become one of the most famous and imitated.

• Release date: September 26, 1969
• Genres: Rock, Pop rock, Rock and roll, Hard rock, Progressive rock, Blues rock, Art rock
• Label: Apple Records
• Awards: Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
• Length: 47:03

Abbey Road tracklist

SIDE A

1. Come Together
   (Lennon-McCartney)
2. Something
   (Harrison)
3. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
   (Lennon-McCartney)
4. Oh! Darling
   (Lennon-McCartney)
5. Octopus’s Garden
   (Starkey)
6. I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
   (Lennon-McCartney)

SIDE B

1. Here Comes the Sun
   (Harrison)
2. Because
   (Lennon-McCartney)
3. You Never Give Me Your Money
   (Lennon-McCartney)
4. Sun King
   Lennon-McCartney)
5. Mean Mr. Mustard
   (Lennon-McCartney)
6. Polythene Pam
   (Lennon-McCartney)
7. She Came In Through the Bathroom Window
   (Lennon-McCartney)
8. Golden Slumbers
   (Lennon-McCartney)
9. Carry That Weight
   (Lennon-McCartney)
10. The End
    (Lennon-McCartney)
11. Her Majesty
    (Lennon-McCartney)

Rubber Soul was released on 3 December 1965 in the United Kingdom, on EMI’s Parlophone label, accompanied by the non-album double A-side single “Day Tripper” / “We Can Work It Out“. The original North American release, issued by Capitol Records, contains ten of the fourteen songs and two tracks withheld from the band’s Help! album. Rubber Soul was met with a highly favourable critical response and topped sales charts in Britain and the United States for several weeks.

The recording sessions took place in London over a four-week period beginning in October 1965. For the first time in their career, the Beatles were able to record an album free of concert, radio or film commitments. Often referred to as a folk rock album, particularly in its Capitol configuration, Rubber Soul incorporates a mix of pop, soul and folk musical styles. The title derives from the colloquialism “plastic soul” and was the Beatles’ way of acknowledging their lack of authenticity compared to the African-American soul artists they admired. After A Hard Day’s Night in 1964, it was the second Beatles LP to contain only original material.

The songs demonstrate the Beatles’ increasing maturity as lyricists, and in their incorporation of brighter guitar tones and new instrumentation such as sitar, harmonium and fuzz bass, the group striving for more expressive sounds and arrangements for their music. The project marked a progression in the band’s treatment of the album format as an artistic platform, an approach they continued to develop with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The four songs omitted by Capitol, including the February 1966 single “Nowhere Man“, later appeared on the North American release Yesterday and Today.

Rubber Soul was highly influential on the Beatles’ peers, leading to a widespread focus away from singles and onto creating albums of consistently high-quality songs. It has been recognised by music critics as an album that opened up the possibilities of pop music in terms of lyrical and musical scope, and as a key work in the creation of styles such as psychedelia and progressive rock. Among its many appearances on critics’ best-album lists, Rolling Stone ranked it fifth on the magazine’s 2012 list “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. In 2000, it was voted at number 34 in the third edition of Colin Larkin’s book All Time Top 1000 Albums. The album was certified 6× platinum by the RIAA in 1997, indicating shipments of at least six million copies in the US. In 2013, Rubber Soul was certified platinum by the BPI for UK sales since 1994.

• Release date: December 3, 1965
• Label: Capitol Records
• Genres: Rock, Pop music, Rock and roll, Pop rock, Folk rock, Blues rock, Art rock
• Length: 34:59
• Studio: EMI, London

Rubber Soul tracklist

SIDE A

1. Drive My Car
   (Lennon/McCartney)
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
   (Lennon/McCartney)
3. You Won’t See Me
   (Lennon/McCartney)
4. Nowhere Man
   (Lennon/McCartney)
5. Think For Yourself
   (Harrison)
6. The Word
   (Lennon/McCartney)
7. Michelle
   (Lennon/McCartney)

SIDE B

1. What Goes On
   (Lennon/McCartney/Starkey)
2. Girl
   (Lennon/McCartney)
3. I’m Looking Through You
   (Lennon/McCartney)
4. In My Life
   (Lennon/McCartney)
5. Wait
   (Lennon/McCartney)
6. If I Needed Someone
   (Harrison)
7. Run For Your Life
   (Lennon/McCartney)