What do you consider the last "early" Beatles album? (Classify the Beatles albums by era) | Page 9 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Myself, I consider Beatles For Sale  and Help ! as being transition albums to the middle period.

The problem to me with Help ! is that half of it, including the fantastic title song, is that it was written to fulfil a brief of a movie soundtrack. With Rubber Soul  there are no such handcuffs.

What deadline was She Loves You  written to meet, @50yearslate? None that I know of.

And even were that the case, there is difference between writing the Beatles next single and writing a song to fit into a movie soundtrack.

For a start, the songs they gave YS were, in the main, discards, orphans, and not written specifically for an animation they thought would fulfil their United Artists contract for a third film without them having to do anything (which it didn’t, much to their displeasure — as John would later say, “You can blame Brian for that!”).

Had it not been for YS, in all likelihood, the first times those songs may have appeared would have been as unreleased Beatles songs on Anthology.

Then take a look at John’s comments about Help  over the years, a song he always thought was played too fast to fit the brief of being that film’s title song — even though that was what it written to be. A few tracks on Beatles For Sale  and Rubber Soul  may have worked for a film soundtrack, but take a step back and seriously consider how many of those originals would have worked in Help !.

I’m not suggesting anything revolutionary here. John, Paul, George and Ringo have said much the same over the years.

Just look at them talking about those songs, including those for the A Hard Day’s Night  soundtrack, and you’ll hear the same thing as I’ve said.

My opinion, had the album after Beatles For Sale  not needed to be a film soundtrack, it would have been a very different album. Though the downside of that, admittedly, however dissatisfied John would later by how they approached something like Help  to make it a film song, it would probably never have been written if they hadn’t been told the film was going to be called Help ! and a title song was needed — which he wrote over the weekend to fit the brief.

I don’t necessarily disagree, @Elementary Penguin, I’m just making the point they may have approached them differently, as John would later say about Help , even though that probably wouldn’t exist had they not been told that was film title and could they please come up with a song.

And I’m also making the point that, with both A Hard Day’s Night  and Help !, there are many examples of them saying about songs written for those soundtracks, “That was a film song”; “We wrote that for the film”, etc.