To many, The Beatles‘ highest moment came on Abbey Road. The 1969 album was the band’s true swan song – after the contentious sessions that characterised the Get Back project, the band re-teamed with producer George Martin and returned to EMI Studios to cut what turned out to be their final LP together. With the addition of former engineer Geoff Emerick and major leaps in technology available to them, The Beatles created the most lush and pristinely produced album of their entire career. Just before Abbey Road hit store shelves, John Lennon announced that he was out of the group, truly making it the final curtain call for the world’s biggest band.
Except that’s not really how it shook out. After Lennon’s departure, Michael Lindsay-Hogg completed his documentary covering the Get Back sessions. As such, the recorded material was assembled into what would be the final album released by The Beatles, Let It Be. Although Lennon had privately departed the group first, the conflicts between the scheduled release dates of Let It Be and Paul McCartney’s debut solo album caused McCartney to claim that he had no plans to work with his bandmates in the near future. That statement was interpreted as a breakup by the press as McCartney was viewed as the main conspirator.
By most accounts, The Beatles seemed to understand (directly or otherwise) that Abbey Road would be their final project together. After the final mixing sessions for ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ on August 20th, 1969, the four band members would never again be in the same studio together. Although it was generally seen to be more harmonious than the Get Back sessions, the Abbey Road sessions continued some of the ongoing conflicts that would eventually lead to the band’s breakup less than a year later.
Abbey Road features a significant step away from the band’s rock and roll roots that were the impetus of the Get Back sessions. Instead, the group embraced ambitious compositions, orchestral arrangements, and intricately layered harmonies. The album’s second side features a long medley that represented the group’s most ambitious composition. Still, Lennon remained unhappy with the final product, dismissing the medley as “junk” and derisively calling McCartney’s ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ “granny music”.
During its initial release, Abbey Road received a mixed critical reception. The album became George Harrison’s coming out party as an equal songwriter, but the whiplash-inducing qualities of the medley were a point of derision. There were also accusations that the album was overproduced and didn’t hold together as a final product. Nevertheless, Abbey Road became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time and remains one of The Beatles’ most beloved and admired works.
The range of music that appears on Abbey Road remains eclectic and diverse. From doo-wop to music hall to experimental drone music and delicate ballads, Abbey Road synthesised the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to music that The Beatles embraced on The White Album and condensed it into a 45-minute opus. The material that appears on the record is certainly varied, but it all adds up to one of the most unique LPs of all time.
For this list, we’ve decided to rate each song as a separate entity. That means that every song that appears in the side two medley, plus the ending track ‘Her Majesty’, will be judged on their own individual merits and not as a part of a longer piece. Here is how every song on Abbey Road stacks up against each other.
