Please Please Me
Artist: The Beatles
Community Score: 7.46

Once "Please Please Me" rocketed to number one, the Beatles rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day. Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins. As the songs rush past, it's easy to get wrapped up in the sound of the record itself without realizing how the... Read More

A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector
Artist: Phil Spector

Featuring Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" in its prime and his early stable of artists, the Ronettes, Crystals, Darlene Love, and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector stands as inarguably the greatest Christmas record of all time. Spector believed he could produce a record for the holidays that would capture... Read More

Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 3
Artist: Elvis Presley
Community Score: 10.00

The original Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 3 was, like its predecessors, an unprecedented release -- no one in rock & roll up to that point, other than Elvis, had ever legitimately earned a second greatest-hits volume, much less a third. This is also the place where the legitimately softer, more mature Presley replaces the angry young Elvis... Read More

Elvis Is Back!
Artist: Elvis Presley
Community Score: 8.67

The 1999 remastering of this classic album features the complete contents of the March 20, 1960, RCA Hollywood session plus the dawn-to-dusk April 2 Nashville session that rounded out the album, for a total of 18 songs, including the three singles and their B-sides from those sessions. Although they have common recording origins, two of the... Read More

Rick Is 21
Artist: Rick Nelson

When his record sales began to sag in 1959, Ricky Nelson turned away from the rockabilly sound of his early recordings to a more middle-of-the-road style on his fifth album, 1960s More Songs by Ricky. But that didn't help, and in early 1961, the artist returned to a modified rock sound, bringing in new writers like Jerry Fuller and Gene Pitney,... Read More

Something Old, Something New
Artist: The Crickets

This CD, containing the complete first album by the post-Buddy Holly Crickets for Liberty (to which they were signed in 1960), augmented by a half-dozen 1963-1964 vintage songs, is actually easier to recommend than the EMI best-of on the band. Most of this CD is straightforward rock & roll, not groundbreaking, but played with a spirit and... Read More

Beatles for Sale
Artist: The Beatles
Community Score: 7.54

It was inevitable that the constant grind of touring, writing, promoting, and recording would grate on the Beatles, but the weariness of Beatles for Sale comes as something of a shock. Only five months before, the group released the joyous A Hard Day's Night. Now, they sound beaten, worn, and, in Lennon's case, bitter and self-loathing. His... Read More

A Hard Day's Night - UK
Artist: The Beatles
Community Score: 6.82

A Hard Day's Night not only was the de facto soundtrack for their movie, not only was it filled with nothing but Lennon-McCartney originals, but it found the Beatles truly coming into their own as a band. All of the disparate influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright, joyous, original sound, filled with ringing guitars and... Read More

With the Beatles
Artist: The Beatles
Community Score: 7.81

With the Beatles is a sequel of the highest order -- one that betters the original by developing its own tone and adding depth. While it may share several similarities with its predecessor -- there is an equal ratio of covers-to-originals, a familiar blend of girl group, Motown, R&B, pop, and rock, and a show tune that interrupts the flow of the... Read More

Jailhouse Rock/Love Me Tender
Artist: Elvis Presley

As part of the commemorative releases surrounding the 20th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, RCA Records released the soundtracks for Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender on a single disc, adding several alternate takes as bonus tracks. It was the first time Jailhouse Rock had been released as a complete soundtrack; it had previously been... Read More