Ranking all the albums of the Beatles from worst to best

2. Rubber Soul (1965)

With all the attention that Sgt Pepper would get a few years later as the most important album in rock & roll to that point, the importance of Rubber Soul was overshadowed. In a sense, this was the completion of the seesaw I mentioned earlier.

After hitting the absolute pinnacle of what a young, high-octane rock & roll band could achieve with A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles began shifting with Beatles for Sale and Help! and they finally landed with Rubber Soul. In the space of one year (Beatles for Sale came out in December 1964, and Rubber Soul in December 1965) the Beatles redefined pop music.

American country rock giant Steve Earle has defined 1965 as the key year in rock & roll’s development because it was when Bob Dylan decided he wanted to be the Beatles and John Lennon decided he wanted to be Bob Dylan. So Dylan released the electrified Bringing It All Back Home and exploded folk music. And John wrote “Norwegian Wood” and changed the way rock & roll saw itself. It was as if the adolescent cultural form suddenly grew into adulthood as 1965 turned into 1966.

The band could still rock with the opening track “Drive My Car.” But there was so much more depth by this point. George was a fully-fledged songwriter and his two tracks – the cynical “Think For Yourself” and the eastern-influenced “If I Needed Somone” would stand out on a lesser album. Here they must compete with songs like “Nowhere Man” and “In My Life” which manage to be overwhelmingly sentimental without becoming saccharine, and spry pop numbers like “Wait” and “I’m Looking Through You,” which further demonstrate that Paul McCartney was the finest pop melodist in rock history.

John also contributes top-shelf songs in addition to “Norwegian Wood.” Even the one obvious misstep, the closing track “Run for Your Life,” was not really seen as a problem until decades later when its cynical proclamation of violence within the context of a romantic relationship began getting closer attention. This was just a few years after Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote the infamous “He Hit Me (and it Felt Like a Kiss).” We’ve moved from there – though not nearly far enough.

Best Tracks: “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “Nowhere Man,” “In My Life”