With the Beatles - a Review of the Beatles' Second Album

November 22, 1963: The Beatles second album, With The Beatles, was released in the UK on 11/22/63 which would go down in history as the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. At this time The Beatles were still mostly unknown in the US and this album wouldn't be released in it's original UK version in the US until The Beatles albums were released on CD in 1987.

8 Original Songs

Like The Beatles debut album, Please Please Me (which was released exactly 8 months earlier on March 22nd) With The Beatles contains eight original songs. Seven by Lennon/McCartney and George Harrison's debut as a songwriter, "Don't Bother Me."

The highlight of these original songs is definitely "All My Loving" which was written mainly by Paul McCartney. This song was considered such a good tune by the band that they selected it as the very first song they played when they first appeared on American TV on The Ed Sullivan Show (February 9, 1964.)

The first two songs were "It Won't Be Long" & "All I've Got to Do" which were both mostly written by John Lennon. John sang lead on both of these tunes as he was the principle songwriter. Most of The Beatles original songs (except for those written for Ringo & George) were sung by the person that wrote it.

"It Won't Be Long" is pretty weak by opening track standards. In fact, in my opinion it's the worst album opener The Beatles ever had. But that doesn't so much mean that it's an awful song, just that it's competing against a lot of really great songs.

"Hold Me Tight" was mainly written by Paul. While the band apparently didn't think much of this song (both Paul & John made disparaging remarks about it later) I think it's definitely got it's charms. It was actually originally recorded for the Please Please Me album but wasn't included. The recording on this album wasn't that Please Please Me recording though, it was re-recorded for With The Beatles.

6 Covers

I like John's covers "Please Mr. Postman," "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," & "Money." I think his voice was really working for these songs at the time. The Paul sung "Till There Was You" is probably the most famous cover on the album though because it was actually the second song on The Beatles performed on that debut Ed Sullivan Show performance (I find it to be an awfully strange choice.)

Not A Highlight Of The Beatles Career

I definitely don't think this is one of The Beatles better albums, in fact I think it's probably their worst! But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy listening to it. It's actually grown on me quite a bit over the years.

Should You Buy It?

If you don't find yourself enjoying their early work much ("She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," etc) then you probably won't like this album much. But if you do like that stuff, then you should get this. Unless you are really into their early stuff most of all, I would probably save this as one of the last Beatles albums you buy.

The Beatles Box Sets

With The Beatles is included as a part of both of the new Beatles box sets. The Beatles Stereo CD Box Set includes every single song The Beatles released from 1962 through 1970 in newly remastered (for better sound quality) stereo.

The Beatles Mono CD Box Set includes The Beatles first 10 albums in their original mono mix. This is a great collection for purists plus many people claim that the original mono mixes actually sound better than the stereo mixes! Only the first 10 albums are included because by the time they got to the final three (Yellow Submarine, Let It Be, & Abbey Road) they were no longer mixing in mono.