Following the ground-breaking album, ‘Rubber Soul,’ The Beatles, along with their longtime producer, George Martin, took it to the next level. The band had made the conscious decision to never tour again thus there was no worry about how they’d recreate these songs live, enhancing the studio’s role in their music. So intricate was its recording that The Beatles would spend over 220 hours recording the album (they had only spent about 80 hours recording ‘Rubber Soul.’)

All bets are off. The biggest drop of the list, not to be surpassed. The two-time #1 record on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time has been reduced to #24. I literally gasped when I saw this one. I suspected it might not retain the #1 spot the way things had been going, but did not expect this. Following their permanent retirement from touring and live performance, The Beatles focussed their energy on recording. Paul McCartney conceived of a record by a fictional Edwardian-era military band. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band was an outlet for the band to experiment with sounds that weren’t necessarily what The Beatles were known for.

AKA ‘The White Album,’ the Top 10 is crumbling in on itself. The Beatles’ ninth record was largely written at a Transcendental Meditation course in Rishikesh, India. The course was led by the controversial Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It was a way for the band to “get away from everything,” in Lennon’s own words. Following their album, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ a landmark in production, ‘The White Album’ is a back to basics type record for the world’s biggest band, stripping back their huge production for this one. It was an incredibly prolific time for the band, but also a time of massive friction.

The highest album to fall yet! The prospective Top 10 is shaping up to be very interesting. This album was mostly composed following the band’s return from their US tour. On that tour, they broke the attendance record for a concert when they played to over 55,000 people at Shea Stadium, they met Bob Dylan (who gave them their first taste of marijuana) and they would also meet one of their biggest influences, Elvis. The songs were influenced by the sounds they heard during their month-long stay in the US, drawing on the Soul music that they heard on the radio.