There is no such thing as a ‘bad’ Beatles album.
What we’re really ranking here is how the greatest band in popular music history evolved from tight, stage-honed rock and roll performers into boundary-breaking studio innovators whose records reshaped the cultural imagination. Across eight years and 13 studio albums, you can hear a remarkable artistic arc: from the raw exuberance of Please Please Me to the vivid psychedelia of Sgt. Pepper, from the fearless experimentation of Revolver to the polished, serene farewell of Abbey Road.
Every phase of the Beatles’ career reflects not just musical growth, but personal transformation, shifting influences, rivalries, breakthroughs, fractures – and ultimately, the unravelling of the group itself. This ranking looks not simply at historical importance or technical innovation, but at the emotional and aesthetic experience of the albums themselves.
Some are cohesive statements; others are messy, sprawling documents of artistic abundance. And at the very top sits an album that is unfiltered, contradictory, brilliant – an album that contains multitudes, just as the Beatles themselves always did.
All 13 Beatles albums, ranked
13. Yellow Submarine (1969)
Yellow Submarine is less a true Beatles album, more a tie-in to an animated film. Only four new Beatles songs appear, alongside the already-released title track and ‘All You Need Is Love’. Side two, meanwhile, is given over to George Martin’s atmospheric orchestral score.
Still, those four new tracks are all worthwhile: ‘Hey Bulldog’ in particular stands out as a muscular, snarling rocker that points forward toward the heavier tones the band would explore on the Let It Be sessions. The album isn’t essential listening, but it’s an interesting snapshot of their cultural ubiquity at the time.
Key Track: ‘Hey Bulldog’
12. Beatles for Sale (1964)
Recorded during a period when the band was touring relentlessly, Beatles for Sale reflects a general mood of exhaustion. The cheerful pop gloss of earlier releases gives way to a more introspective and occasionally bitter tone – especially in Lennon’s songs.
Yet the record is caught halfway: original emotional songwriting sits alongside cover material meant to fill time. It’s transitional, but you can hear the seeds of maturity that would fully bloom just a year later.
Key Track: ‘No Reply’
11. With The Beatles (1963)
Their second LP finds the Beatles still proving themselves as a high-energy beat group. The album is dominated by covers and enthusiastic performances rather than artistic statements. But even here, you can hear the group pushing past convention – McCartney’s vocal on ‘All My Loving’ and Harrison’s emerging identity on ‘Don’t Bother Me’ hint that something much larger is forming beneath the surface.
Key Track: ‘All My Loving’
10. Please Please Me (1963)
The debut is essentially the Beatles’ Cavern Club live set captured with minimal overdubs in a single day. It bursts with immediacy and personality, from the tight, driving rhythm of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ to the playful call-and-response of ‘Please Please Me’. Evidence of a band that had already mastered performance before fame hit, it reaches a peak on Lennon’s torn-throat performance of ‘Twist and Shout’, one of the most iconic rock vocals ever recorded.
Please Please Me might not yet reach the level of ‘album art’ that the Beatles would hit in such style a couple of years later, but it is a brilliantly charismatic introduction, full of energy, charm, and youthful audacity.
Key Track: ‘Twist and Shout’
9. Let It Be (1970)
Let It Be is defined by its fractured and uneasy context: the Beatles were splintering, and the sessions were tense and directionless. Yet the music that emerged is often deeply moving – plain-spoken, weary, and occasionally majestic. ‘Two of Us’ captures Lennon and McCartney harmonizing like old friends trying to remember why they started this journey. The album is imperfect, but its vulnerability is its strength: this is the sound of something ending.
Key Track: ‘Two of Us’
8. Help! (1965)
Help! marks the beginning of the Beatles’ shift from pop entertainment to introspection. Lennon’s title track is an anxious plea wrapped in upbeat arrangement, while ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ shows a direct Bob Dylan influence, signalling the start of a more confessional, emotionally nuanced songwriting phase. Meanwhile, McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’ stands as one of the first Beatles songs to fully detach from the band format, hinting at the individualism that would define their later years.
Key Track: ‘Help!’
7. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The band’s first all-original album, A Hard Day’s Night marks the moment the Lennon–McCartney songwriting engine becomes a cultural force, combining wit, melody, and emotional range in a way that reshaped popular music. The opening chord of the title track – a bright, striking combination of guitar, piano, and bass – grabbed attention worldwide and set a template for British rock’s harmonic adventurousness in the 1960s.
Elsewhere, there’s unrelenting youthful joy in tracks like ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, but also emotional shading in Lennon’s introspective ‘If I Fell’ and McCartney’s tender ‘And I Love Her’, hinting at the more sophisticated storytelling to come.
Key Track: ‘And I Love Her’
6. Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Surprised to see this rank so high? Don't be. Although assembled from a TV project and singles, this album captures the psychedelic peak of the Beatles’ studio imagination. ‘I Am the Walrus’ is deliciously twisted, surreal and theatrical; ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ – originally standalone singles – extend psychedelia into introspection and childhood memory.
The band sounds like they’re inventing entire recording methods as they go. Magical Mystery Tour might be uneven, but the highs are astronomical.
Key Track: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
5. Rubber Soul (1965)
Rubber Soul is the turning point – the album where the Beatles stop being just a pop group and become fully album-oriented artists, thinking of songs as part of a cohesive listening experience rather than just singles. Folk music influences and the laid-back sounds of the American West Coast appear, giving the album a warm, organic texture.
Lyrics deepen into adulthood: Lennon reflects on memory and mortality in ‘In My Life’, McCartney invents charming character vignettes in ‘Michelle’, and Harrison asserts his melodic voice in ‘If I Needed Someone’. The album maintains a unified, introspective mood, blending sophistication and intimacy. Without Rubber Soul, there is no Revolver.
Key Track: ‘In My Life’
4. Abbey Road (1969)
A final flourish of unity. Polished production, lush harmonies, and the famous Side Two medley – a seamless sequence of short songs flowing into one another – create a sense of summation, showcasing the band’s mastery of structure and pacing. McCartney and Lennon trade triumphant songwriting highlights, Harrison blooms with ‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and even Ringo shines with ‘Octopus’s Garden’, one of his most charming and playful contributions.
It’s a farewell album disguised as a victory lap: elegant, luminous, and deeply emotional, leaving a lasting sense of closure and artistic accomplishment.
Key Track: ‘Here Comes the Sun’
3. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Not just an album but a cultural event, Sgt. Pepper expanded the idea of what a studio LP could be. It wasn’t just a collection of songs, but a carefully constructed conceptual framework: the titular ‘band’ provided a narrative guise, the songs flowed seamlessly, and the iconic cover art created a visual manifesto of the Beatles’ world.
The production innovations were unprecedented – multitrack recording, tape loops, varispeed effects, and complex orchestration allowed textures and sounds previously impossible in pop music. Psychedelia, avant-garde touches, and early hints of progressive rock blended with classical instrumentation to influence generations of musicians.
While tracks like ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ or ‘A Day in the Life’ are emotionally and musically gripping, some, such as ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ or ‘Within You Without You’, are more playful or cerebral. Its release changed the rules, showing that albums could be art, immersive experiences, and cultural statements, not just collections of singles.
Key Track: ‘A Day in the Life’
2. Revolver (1966)
Revolver is the Beatles’ most fearless album. They tear up genre, structure, and sonic boundaries, blending classical strings, as in the hauntingly elegant ‘Eleanor Rigby’, with tape-loop experiments and backward recording on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, where they forge a sense of ecstatic transcendence.
Motown-influenced rhythm sections – heard in the punchy groove of ‘Got to Get You into My Life’ – add immediacy and drive, while Harrison’s Indian-inspired guitar on ‘Love You To’ stretches Western pop toward the East. Every member shines: Lennon’s lyrical introspection, McCartney’s melodic inventiveness, Harrison’s exploratory spirit, and Ringo’s rhythmic inventiveness.
The band’s unity in purpose and curiosity is palpable, making Revolver a bold, cohesive statement. For anyone arguing this is their single greatest album, the evidence is abundant, from technical innovation to sheer songwriting brilliance.
Key Track: ‘Eleanor Rigby’
And the greatest Beatles album is...
1. The Beatles (The White Album) (1968)
The Beatles (The White Album) is the band’s most expansive and human album. Unlike their previous records, it deliberately abandons polish and conceptual unity, favouring individuality and total creative freedom.
McCartney demonstrates astonishing stylistic mastery, shifting effortlessly from the delicate folk fingerpicking of ‘Blackbird’ to the furious, proto-metal intensity of ‘Helter Skelter’. Lennon channels raw emotional urgency across a spectrum of moods, from the fragmented, surrealist ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ to the intimate, elegiac ‘Julia’.
George Harrison reaches a spiritual turning point, blending virtuoso guitar work with introspective lyricism on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and the hauntingly subtle ‘Long, Long, Long’. And Ringo steps forward as a songwriter, contributing the playful, charming ‘Don’t Pass Me By’, marking his first fully realized solo composition within the band’s catalogue.
The album spans genres – folk, blues, rock, lullabies, avant-garde noise collages – and fragments that feel like private glimpses into each artist’s world. The apparent ‘messiness’ is deliberate; it is the Beatles’ personality unleashed. More than a collection of songs, The White Album is a portrait of four artists at full intensity, individually brilliant yet collectively unforgettable, making it their most human and enduring achievement.
Key Track: ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’
Five Beatles albums… and their spiritual successors
The Beatles’ albums didn’t just define their era – they left a blueprint for generations of musicians. From psychedelic experimentation to folk introspection, from polished studio craft to sprawling eclecticism, each era inspired bands to reinterpret their innovations. These five albums carry the spirit of different Beatles records into new contexts, decades later.
1. Revolver
Hear it in: Radiohead – OK Computer (1997)
Both albums are fearless in experimentation, bending genre, studio techniques, and song structure while reflecting contemporary anxieties.
2. Rubber Soul
Hear it in: Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (2008)
Folk-inspired, introspective, and cohesive, this album channels the warm, reflective acoustic textures and lyrical maturity of Rubber Soul.
3. The White Album
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
Eclectic, sprawling, and rawly human, it embraces genre-hopping and personal storytelling, echoing the White Album’s messy genius.
1. Sgt. Pepper
Hear it in: The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)
Like Sgt. Pepper, this is a conceptual, psychedelic pop-rock album with lush production and thematic cohesion, blending whimsy and philosophical depth.
5. Abbey Road
Steely Dan – Aja (1977)
Polished, meticulous, and musically sumptuous, with tight arrangements and seamless flow, much like Abbey Road’s Side Two medley.
All pics Getty Images
