Meet the Beatles!
wasn't the first
Beatles
album released in the U.S. (that would've been
Introducing the Beatles
, on
Vee Jay
), but as the first
album released by
Capitol Records
, it was indeed the LP where many millions of Americans were introduced to the Fab Four. As an introduction, there could hardly have been one better. Largely comprised of material released on their second U.K. LP,
With the Beatles
-- the album art offers a blue-tinted spin on that late-1963 release --
contains nine of that album's 14 songs, cutting out almost all the covers (all the better for publishing rights, but also an effective showcase of the group's talents; it's hard not to view the inclusion of the one remaining cover, "Till There Was You" from The Music Man, as a way to illustrate how
could appeal to parents) in a quest to trim the LP down to 12 songs. What was added to the
material are three of
the Beatles
best early songs: their American breakthrough single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and its U.K. B-side ballad "This Boy," plus "I Saw Her Standing There" from their U.K. debut
Please Please Me
(this song was the B-side of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the U.S.). The revisions make
slightly more of a frenetic rock & roll record than its parent LP -- there isn't much R&B or as many ballads -- which, at the time, made it an appropriate soundtrack for the wild heyday of Beatlemania but, as the years have passed, the emphasis on joyous, exuberant rock & roll means that
still sounds fresh and exciting on its own terms. [A 50th Anniversary release of the album included both mono and stereo mixes of the original.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine