By MATTHEW HENRY
Contributing Writer
Whether you know a few of their songs or all of their songs, The Beatles are at the top of the charts again. New this week to iTunes is the The Beatles 1 album, a collection of the band’s greatest hits. The 27 track album contains all of the band’s songs that went number one in either Britain or the Unites States, including such hits as “Penny Lane”, “Let It Be”, and the unmistakable “Hey Jude”. 1 jumped to the top of the charts ahead of Adele’s hit album 21 and Lil Wayne’s recently released album, Tha Carter IV on iTunes.
The album was originally released in 2000 has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and is still the best-selling album of the last decade in the United States. The album is also gaining support through Twitter, where the hashtag “#MyBeatles1” is trending and receiving tweets from many of today’s popular music artists like David Grohl of Foo Fighters and Coldplay.
The first track on 1, “Love Me Do”, portrays the Beatles’ younger, clean cut days. One can only picture a crowd of young, screaming girls when listening to the first few songs. A few tracks later we can hear the Beatles drift into their well-known psychedelic phase during the days when the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album was written. The recent success of 1 has brought another famed Beatles album on iTunes back into popularity, Abbey Road, one of the most recognizable albums of all time. Every so often, famous albums spike in popularity for a week or so and then drop back down again. This cycle is usually often seen with Pink Floyd’s masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon.
The re-emergence of these famous albums has also attracted younger fans, new to the music of the Beatles and other bands of their day. One attempt made by the band to draw new and old fans to their music was the release of The Beatles: Rock Band one title in the popular video game series. Sadly, the success of 1 can only be seen by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the two remaining members of the Beatles. Who knows when another Beatles album will re-emerge with popularity, but we can only imagine that it will be somewhere down the long and winding road.
