Meet The Beatles

1964年1月20日リリース、11週1位獲得。
世界的なビートルズ旋風の60周年を記念して、主に1964年にアメリカでリリースされたザ・ビートルズのアルバム群がモノ・ミックスの新たなアナログ盤として蘇る。
オリジナル・モノ・マスターからカッティングした180グラム仕様。
オリジナルを忠実に再現したアートワークを使用。さらに、今回新たに付属する二つ折りのインサートには、米国のビートルズ研究家/作家のブルース・スパイザーによるエッセイが掲載。また、ラッカー盤のカッティングは、ケヴィン・リーヴスがナッシュヴィルにあるイースト・アイリス・スタジオで新たに手がけた。

Meet the Beatles! wasn't the first Beatles album released in the U.S. (that would've been Introducing the Beatles, on Vee Jay), but as the first Beatles album released by Capitol Records, it was indeed the LP where many millions of Americans were introduced to the Fab Four. As an introduction, there could hardly have been one better. Largely comprised of material released on their second U.K. LP, With the Beatles -- the album art offers a blue-tinted spin on that late-1963 release -- Meet the Beatles! contains nine of that album's 14 songs, cutting out almost all the covers (all the better for publishing rights, but also an effective showcase of the group's talents; it's hard not to view the inclusion of the one remaining cover, "Till There Was You" from The Music Man, as a way to illustrate how Meet the Beatles! could appeal to parents) in a quest to trim the LP down to 12 songs. What was added to the With the Beatles material are three of the Beatles best early songs: their American breakthrough single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and its U.K. B-side ballad "This Boy," plus "I Saw Her Standing There" from their U.K. debut Please Please Me (this song was the B-side of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the U.S.). The revisions make Meet the Beatles! slightly more of a frenetic rock & roll record than its parent LP -- there isn't much R&B or as many ballads -- which, at the time, made it an appropriate soundtrack for the wild heyday of Beatlemania but, as the years have passed, the emphasis on joyous, exuberant rock & roll means that Meet the Beatles! still sounds fresh and exciting on its own terms. [A 50th Anniversary release of the album included both mono and stereo mixes of the original.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine