Is "Revolver" the most significant Beatles album?

Each week, I'll present a new album for your consideration—a means for passing these uncertain times in musical bliss. For some readers, hearing about the latest selection might offer a chance reacquaintance with an old friend. For others, the series might provide an unexpected avenue for making a new one.

For years, the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club" reigned supreme, routinely topping "Best of" lists as the finest album ever recorded. In the decades since the release of the Beatles' masterworks on compact disc in 1987, when the group's American LPs were deleted in favor of their canonical UK counterparts, the "Revolver" album has slowly but surely gained momentum — and particularly among Stateside listeners, who had no idea what they'd been missing.

By the advent of the band's "Rubber Soul" album in 1965, the Beatles had begun self-consciously challenging themselves to create new sounds with each new LP. The extreme musical shifts from "Rubber Soul" to "Revolver" are a terrific case in point. In later years, George Harrison would come to describe the records as parts one and two of the same album. In this instance, the Quiet Beatle couldn't have been more wrong. The folkish, melodic sounds of "Rubber Soul" exist in sharp contrast with "Revolver"'s dramatic generic shifts and brash experimentation.

Source: Kenneth Womack/salon.com

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