Beatles discography



         


The Beatles released an impressive 13 albums in a mere seven years. This was an astonishing achievement considering the relatively small amount of time in which they made them.

The first four Beatles vinyl albums differ based on their location of release. Those released in the US were of lower sound quality and had some of their songs omitted. Additionally, even though the first four Beatles albums were originally released as both monaural and stereo recordings in the United Kingdom, stereo phonographs were quite rare in England at the time. Naturally, then, George Martin and The Beatles only spent a lot of time on the mono mixes. Many early songs were later remastered by Capitol Records for the US as artificial stereo with bass on one side and treble on the other side, with loads of added echo, much to the disgust of fans today.

When it came time to release the Beatles catalog on CD, the decision was made to use the original British versions of the albums, since those were the "way the Beatles originally intended them to be." The first four CDs are of the original mono mixes. No official stereo mix of the first four albums has been released on compact disc, but there are plenty of "official looking" bootleg CDs floating around that include the US stereo mixes and even bear the "Apple" logo. Martin and the Beatles started to spend more time on stereo mixes by 1965.

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In the U.K.

Originally signed to Parlophone/EMI in the UK, the Beatles' (UK) official studio albums (not including compilations and the like) were:

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Compilations and other releases

Note: The reason for the Past Masters compilations are so that every song the Beatles released in 1962-1970 could be on a CD. They include singles and B-sides, two songs sung in German, the contents of an EP released in 1964 that had four additional songs, the "single" versions of the songs "Get Back" and "Let It Be", and a version of "Across the Universe" that had bird-like sound effects.
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Christmas records

The Beatles also recorded annual Christmas records for their fan club members. From 1963 to 1969 these were released as 7" flexidiscs on LYN. In 1970 the 7 previous records were put onto a 12" vinyl record. These remain largely unavailable today, with the exception of one track, "Christmastime Is Here Again", being released on a CD single in the 1990s:

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In the U.S.

In the United States, as noted above, the Beatles albums were rearranged, retitled and remixed. Some of the US releases were nearly identical to one another, often times only varying by one or two songs. Most releases contained songs that were also found on other records, which made things difficult for the American Beatles fan trying to purchase the band's entire catalog. Some of the US releases included:

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Singles

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U.K. singles

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U.S. singles

See Beatles Bootlegs for a run down of some of the more popular unauthorized, illegal bootleg material.

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Filmography

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