With the Beatles Remastered - Lennon and McCartney Originals

By Johnny Moon

Other than Yellow Submarine (which includes a lot of George Martin instrumentals and two George Harrison originals) no Beatles album has a lower percentage of Lennon/McCartney originals than With The Beatles.

Just 7 of the 14 songs on this album were written by John and/or Paul (that's 50% of course). 6 of the other 7 are covers (such as "Till There Was You" and "Money") and the other one is George's songwriting debut, "Don't Bother Me."

I recently wrote an article like this one about the Lennon/McCartney originals on The Beatles For Sale album and the main reason I think that Beatles For Sale is a superior album to this one is that I much prefer those 8 songs to these 7. Although, I should add that I do prefer the covers on this one.

What follows is a short synopsis of each of these songs (which do sound best when heard on the With The Beatles Remastered version included in The Beatles in Mono Box Set).

"It Won't Be Long" - Probably my least favorite album opener by the Fab Four but still one of the better songs on this album. It's a good song but the competition among album openers is rather fierce.

"All I've Gotta Do" - Lately this may be my favorite song on this album. I really love John's vocal performance on it and the way John and Paul's vocals blend together on the refrain is really fantastic.

"All My Loving" - This is easily the most popular song on With The Beatles (which, like many of their albums, included no singles). Paul wrote (and sung) this one.

"Little Child" - One of the very few songs in the Lennon/McCartney catalog I just have no use for. I don't like this one and it shows no signs of growing on me. The harmonica solo it's only saving grace (that sounds pretty rocking in the remastered mono version).

"Hold Me Tight" - This is a pretty cute song and it's got a lot of energy. One of my favorites on this album and definitely one of their more overlooked early pop classics.

"I Wanna Be Your Man" - John and Paul originally wrote this for The Rolling Stones and then decided to release their own version of it (with Ringo) on vocals too. It's a cool part of their mythology (writing The Stones first song for them) but it's not much of a song, is it? I don't care for it.

"Not A Second Time" - Sounds like filler to me. Not one of their best efforts.

CLICK HERE for The Beatles in Mono Box Set which includes the best version of With The Beatles in this author's opinion.

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