The Beatles
Abbey Road

THE REVIEW

"I mean, no because, you know, it's not that I don't like them but, I mean they're a bit old, don't you think? I mean I like them, not saying I don't, especially the one that also has the TIM commercial and then there's one I used to listen to when I was little, what's it called? wait it was obabi obaba nananana na nananana, do you get it? Anyway, Rihanna is the top but I also listen to serious music, in fact, I adore Husher." If I had a chromosome XY in front of me I would have set him on fire, doing him a big favor, but the décolleté has a calming effect on me and I kept smiling dumbfounded while thinking about how and when it happened, how we went from "Across The Universe" to "Womanizer" in less than 40 years without anyone saying anything.

From zenith to nadir.

40 years ago the second-last Beatles album was released, the last in recording, their musical testament.

Between this record and any other, there is a chasm not to be found in the individual songs but in the magic and surreal balance of the whole, a work of inlay that, however studied and carved with hours of recording studio, appears naturally disarming, almost consequential, each song inevitably leads to the next, and this feeling materializes in the incredible side B.

Objectively "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Octopus's Garden", "Mean Mister Mustard" are not great songs, they are obviously beautiful songs (the Beatles are genetically incapable of writing bad songs) not foundational, not even useful outside their context, but here in this album, they become necessary, vital for the album itself, paradoxically with a "Dear Prudence" or an "A Day In The Life" (songs that deserve a Nobel with an Oscar inside with a Pulitzer inside) in their place the album would not gain anything, indeed it would lose its magical cohesion.

But alongside those songs that do the dirty work, the Fab Four give us several masterpieces: the album opens with a song that alone is worth a career and here is just one of the many gems, "Come Together" seems written tomorrow, tense, dirty, sexual "Something" makes you understand why there are so many people who would like to see Yoko Ono kicked in the teeth, she accelerated a process that if it had naturally continued would have made Harrison explode as an equal talent in the next album "Oh Darling" is simply beautiful, without pretensions of complexity, just beautiful "I Want You" is as nerve-racking and alienating as it wanted to be.

And then there is side B, and with side B of Abbey Road, music reaches the top and from that moment on, it can only descend, that's what happened, that's why "Womanizer".

A single song of just over 20 minutes divided into 11 episodes with Harrison's sunny introduction "Here Comes The Sun" standing out a bit and the irreverent surprise ending of "Her Majesty". 

In the midst, a brilliant medley composed of "Because" (fantastic), "You Never Give Me Your Money", "Sun King", "Mean Mister Mustard", "Polythene Pam", "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window", "Golden Slumbers" (tear-inducing!), "Carry That Weight", "The End" (in my opinion one of the most beautiful Beatles songs, and Beatles always coincide with "music in general") where apart from "Because", "Golden Slumbers", and "The End" each song outside this context would lose strength and meaning, which instead in their habitat is astonishingly elevated.

The importance of this album is understandable; Abbey Road represents the Beatles themselves: there have been many musicians technically better than them, singers vocally better than them, there is someone who writes better lyrics than theirs (all of which can easily be observed by looking at their solo careers, Lennon, partly, excluded) but no one can get close to the magic derived from their union.