The Beatles have always been one of the few bands that have had a perfect discography. Throughout every piece of their career, there has never been a record that could be considered subpar or even mediocre compared to their competition, and by the time they left everything behind on Abbey Road, they had wrapped up their career on the most fitting note possible with their medley of fantastic music at the end of the record. There is one asterisk next to their greatest work, though, and that would be Let It Be.
As much as the band fought to keep the record on the shelf, bringing in Phil Spector to add some finishing touches to their back-to-basics album completely wrecked what the band was going for. Everyone was hoping to hear the Fab Four in a more refined state, and then suddenly the rootsy songs were intercut with tracks that either didn’t need to be there, like ‘Maggie Mae’ or completely butchered with strings like ‘The Long and Winding Road’,
But even if some pieces could have been left on the cutting room floor, what if there was a way to fix the record a little bit? While many of the tunes from the band’s solo careers could have ended up on the record, though, let’s see if we can make a record by adding in some singles from their career and shuffling things around to make it a more flowing album.
After all, Paul McCartney already had his own vision of what the album should be with Let It Be… Naked, so this would be an extension of that. And while this approach might break people’s hearts, it might make for a better way of listening to the record rather than the fractured version we got.
Adding in new songs
The idea of adding new Beatles songs to an album is often like trying to fix a painting by Rembrandt; you just don’t do it. Their vision was already perfect, and what makes anyone think that they could do better than what they intended to put on there? Well, given the fact that the band themselves were displeased with the final product, this could be a unique way of looking at the record with some new songs.
Since everything was about keeping things loose, bringing in songs like ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ could have been a way of documenting their lives at the time while still keeping the spirit of the record. And since George Harrison got criminally shafted during the record, bringing in ‘Old Brown Shoe’ could have been a nice way of breaking up the ballads on the record like ‘Across the Universe’.
And the idea of adding new material also means correcting one cardinal sin that Spector committed: PUT ‘DON’T LET ME DOWN’ ON THE RECORD. The song was already one of the best standalone singles on the project, and since this a contractual obligation album at the end of their career, Lennon’s song deserved to be on the record the same way ‘Get Back’ was. But if we add any new tracks, that also means making subtle tweaks to the album at large.
Refining what’s there
While there’s hardly any reason to say that The Beatles needed to take out certain songs, a revised Let It Be would be a good opportunity to shuffle up the tracks a little bit. Since the album was initially named after ‘Get Back’, having it open the record would be a great way to hit the ground running, eventually putting ‘Two of Us’ in the middle of the record so that Lennon’s pre-song rant breaks things up.
From there, it would be a case of striking the right balance between not having too many ballads next to each other and trying to create the vibe of them playing together in the room. ‘Across The Universe’ is far more tender than anything else on the project, but if it comes right out of a song like ‘I Me Mine’, for instance, it could be a nice way to cleanse the palette before going back into soft territory like ‘Two of Us’.
So, would this new version of Let It Be work? Ultimately, that’s up for you to decide, but this running order of the album not only fixes the scattershot sounds of the original but also helps tie things up a lot nicer than what the Fab Four had to go through. It would have been impossible trying to ask the band to make the perfect finale of their career twice, but even if people had closure from ‘The End’, ending things off with Let It Be is a great way for people to remember the band that lit a fire in the hearts of so many.