25 Albums I Can't Live Without: #1

The Beatles, "Abbey Road"

I’ve said before that my Beatles fandom came from my mom. However, she was far more into the band’s earlier stuff, so their later music was mine to discover. And there’s nothing better than “Abbey Road.”

This was the last album the Fab Four recorded — “Let It Be” came before, but the band released it a year after “Abbey Road” — and the tension that characterized the “Let It Be” sessions was absent on “Abbey Road.”

“Abbey Road” perfectly melds the pop-rock sounds that the Beatles came to define with their edgier and more artsy sides. The songs are all classics.

The album kicks off with “Come Together,” which John Lennon originally wrote as a political anthem, but he turned it into a piece about the guy he describes in the song.

Frank Sinatra called “Something,” a George Harrison tune he mistakenly credited to Lennon & McCartney, "the greatest love song ever written," and it’s tough to argue with that characterization.

Next up are two Paul McCartney songs in his retro style. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” mines the same Edwardian territory as much of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The rest of the band dismissed the song as “granny music.”

“Oh! Darling” is a ‘50s-inspired track that Paul sings with soul.

Ringo Starr wrote “Octopus’s Garden” and sang lead on it.

John’s “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is a blistering blues epic.

And that’s just Side 1. Side 2 is even better! It kicks off with George’s glorious “Here Comes the Sun.”

The Beethoven-inspired “Because” featured John, Paul, and George singing triple-tracked harmonies to sound like nine voices.

The rest of the second side is a suite of songs and song fragments that some people call a medley, but I see it as a suite of multiple medleys. The suite kicks off with “You Never Give Me Your Money,” one of Paul’s greatest songs.

“Sun King” is John’s son, and it features triple-tracked vocals as well as a series of words and phrases in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, along with a Liverpool children’s taunt.

The first medley (in my eyes) is “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” John wrote the first two snippets, and Paul wrote the last one.

The second medley is the gorgeously orchestrated “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End,” all of which are Paul compositions.

“Her Majesty” appears as a sort of hidden track.

The 2019 3-LP 50th anniversary edition of “Abbey Road” puts the entire suite together (minus some of the guitar solos and orchestrations and adding “Her Majesty” where the band originally wanted it) in a single track as “The Long One.”

Knowing that “Abbey Road” was the Beatles’ last recording makes Side 2 a fitting coda to their career as a band. This is an album that I can give a spin anytime, and I think it’s the best album of all time.

Photo credit: Apple (Parlophone)/EMI