My 13 Favorite Middle Period Beatles Songs

From Rubber Soul to Magical Mystery Tour

Mar 05, 2023

In my first article on the Beatles I provided a list of my favorite “early” Beatles songs. These were tracks from their first album released on 1963 until their Help! album, which came out in 1965.

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My 13 Favorite Early Beatles Songs

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2 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Alec Joseph Ott

While some may disagree with my groupings, I define their middle period as being as those albums coming after Help!, starting with Rubber Soul and ending with Magical Mystery Tour.

It is amazing to see that this group came out with a new album twice a year on average, as exemplified by their release of British-based albums:

1963: Please Please Me and With the Beatles
1964: Beatles for Sale and A Hard Day's Night
1965: Help! and Rubber Soul
1966: Revolver
1967: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour
1968: The Beatles (the two-disk set, "The White Album")
1969: Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road
1970: Let It Be

It’s even more dramatic when you scan the American releases, which admittedly were catching up at first:

1964: Meet the Beatles!, The Beatles' Second Album, A Hard Day's Night, Something New, and Beatles '65
1965: The Early Beatles, Beatles VI, Help!, and Rubber Soul
1966: Yesterday and Today and Revolver
1967: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour
1968: The Beatles (the two-disk set, "The White Album")
1969: Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road
1970: Let It Be and Hey Jude

And the above lists do not even include their singles and some releases, like the soundtrack version of A Hard Day’s Night.

The Beatles’ middle period is often characterized by critics as their move beyond songs simply about relationships with girls. This is certainly true, but for me as I was reviewing their albums as a young man, I saw that after Help!, they did not feel the need to print their group name on the cover, at least explicitly. In fact, when I was looking for my next Beatles record to buy, I wasn’t absolutely sure if Magical Mystery Tour was really their album. (I later spotted the name spelled out with star-shaped characters.) All I saw were these strange characters dressed in crude animal costumes. Sgt. Peppers followed the same pattern by spelling out their name in a depicted flower arrangement. Revolver and Rubber Soul were more obvious; their photos where right there on the cover, but still, no name on the cover.

Another difference, which really came in towards the end of their early days, was that they no longer covered other artists’ music. They certainly had no issue with recording other artists’ songs—their concert set lists contained a large percentage of these songs—"Twist and Shout,” “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” just to name a few. Yet, with two of the most gifted songwriters of the 20^th century, Lennon and McCartney, in one group, the Beatles’ own output was dramatic. If that were not enough, the group also included the song-writing talents of George Harrison. George’s own song writing abilities, while overshadowed only by John and Paul, compare quite favorably with any of the Beatles contemporaries, and the quality of his work only got better with each new album.

Another notable difference in this period is the artists’ experimentation with psychedelic drugs, such as LSD. Rubber Soul and Revolver are the first to have this characterization. To me this is more evident in Lennon’s output than McCartney’s, at least in Rubber Soul and Revolver. The song most obviously influenced by John’s experimentation was his “Tomorrow Never Knows.” It’s a strange journey indeed.

That journey continued for Lennon in Sgt. Peppers with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Paul’s most obvious drug-influenced output come in his contribution to “A Day In The Life,” where he writes of taking a smoke and going off into a dream.

Sgt. Peppers is widely considered to be the Beatles’ greatest artistic achievement and was certainly one of the first “concept” albums, where the music is provided in a collection with a central theme. Magical Mystery Tour follows that example, but the concept, while offering a general magical quality about it, is less clear.

As I mentioned in my previous post on the early Beatles, I like the Beatles albums in their entirety. If pressed to give my list of favorites of their “middle stage” songs, I give the following list: