Yellow Submarine

The only Beatles album that could really be classified as inessential, mostly because it wasn't really a proper album at all, but a soundtrack that only utilized four new Beatles songs. (The rest of the album was filled out with "Yellow Submarine," "All You Need Is Love," and a George Martin score that held little appeal to rock listeners.) What's more, the four new tracks were little more than pleasant throwaways that had been recorded during 1967 and early 1968. These aren't all that bad; "All Together Now" is a kiddieish singalong, "Hey Bulldog" has some mild Lennon nastiness, and Harrison's "It's All Too Much" is highlighted by some tidal waves of feedback guitar. It would have been far better value if it had been released as a four-song EP (an idea the Beatles even considered at one point, with the addition of a bonus track in "Across the Universe," but ultimately discarded). — Richie Unterberger.

The most dashed-off of the Beatles' records, Yellow Submarine doesn't have much to it: the goofy title track and "All You Need Is Love" are reprised from earlier discs, George Martin's trifle of a score to the animated Submarine feature takes up the second half, and that leaves just four relatively insubstantial new tracks. The Beatles' throwaways are anyone else's classics, though: "Hey Bulldog," the last song Lennon and McCartney wrote in full collaboration, has the instinctive urgency of their best work, Paul's singalong "All Together Now" is awfully cute, and more than one band has dedicated its career to trying to replicate what George's guitars are doing on his dazed, pulsing "It's All Too Much." — Douglas Wolk.