Love (Beatles album)

George Martin and his son Giles began work on Love after obtaining permission from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison (the latter two representing the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison, respectively).^[1] The idea for using the Beatles' music in a Cirque du Soleil production had originally come from Harrison, who died in November 2001,^[2][3] through his friendship with the company's founder, Guy Laliberté.^[4]

Speaking to Mojo editor Jim Irvin in December 2006, Giles Martin said that he first created a demo combining "Within You Without You" with "Tomorrow Never Knows", which he then nervously presented to McCartney and Starr for their approval. In Martin's recollection, "they loved it", with McCartney saying: "This is what we should be doing, more of this."^[5]

In discussing the project, Giles Martin commented that elements were used from recordings in the Beatles catalogue, "the original four tracks, eight tracks and two tracks and used this palette of sounds and music to create a soundbed".^[1] Because he was concerned that they might not get the green light to proceed with Love, he began by making digital back-ups of the original multi-track recordings, just to get started on the project. He also said that he and his father mixed more music than was eventually released, including "She's Leaving Home" and a version of "Girl" that he was particularly fond of, with the latter eventually being released in 2011 as a bonus track on the album on iTunes.^[6]

McCartney and Starr both responded very positively to the completed album. McCartney said that it "puts The Beatles back together again, because suddenly there's John and George with me and Ringo". Starr commended the Martins for their work, adding that Love was "really powerful for me and I even heard things I'd forgotten we'd recorded".^[7][8]

Love contains elements from 130 individual commercially released and demo recordings of the Beatles,^[9] and is a complex remix and polymix of multiple songs known as a mashup.^[10] As described by Alexis Petridis, mashups were popular earlier in the 2000s, with the Beatles serving as popular material; examples included Danger Mouse The Grey Album (2004), on which the producer fuses Jay-Z's rapping with music from the Beatles' White Album (1968), and Go Home Productions' "Paperback Believer", which used the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" and the Monkees' "Daydream Believer".^[11] McCartney was a fan of the "bootleg explosion", and hired mash-up producer Freelance Hellraiser as a DJ on his 2004 world tour,^[11] leading to the 2005 collaboration Twin Freaks.^[12]

Love has also been described as a sound collage.^{[13][14][15][16][17]} According to Neil Spencer of The Observer, the album's 26 tracks "are set in an ambient flow of sound collages",^[14] while according to David Cavanagh, Love comprises mashups and megamixes that play "plurally, in collage form", resulting in album that "[flies] in the face of tradition by placing The Beatles in a 21st century sampladelic culture."^[17]

More information Aggregate scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	83/100[37]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[22]
Blender	[38]
Entertainment Weekly	A[39]
The Guardian	[11]
NME	8/10[40]
The Observer	[14]
Pitchfork	8.5/10[41]
PopMatters	6/10[42]
Q	[43]
Rolling Stone	[44]
Slant	[45]
Uncut	[4]

Close

Love was first played publicly on Virgin Radio's The Geoff Show. Geoff Lloyd, the show's host, chose to play the entire work uninterrupted, to allow younger fans to experience an album premiere.^[46]

The album was released as a standard compact disc version, a two-disc CD and DVD-Audio package, a two-disc vinyl package, and as a digital download. The DVD-Audio disc contains a 5.1-channel surround sound mix (96 kHz 24-bit MLP), downmixable to two-channel. For backwards compatibility it also contains separate audio-only DVD-Video content with two-channel stereo (48 kHz 16-bit PCM) and 5.1-channel surround (448 kbit/s Dolby Digital and 754 kbit/s DTS).

Love placed at number 3 on the UK Albums Chart during its first week of release, trailing Westlife's The Love Album and Oasis' Stop the Clocks compilation.^[47] In the United States, it debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200, where it was certified Platinum in late 2006.^[48] At the 50th Grammy Awards in February 2008, Love won in the categories Best Compilation Soundtrack Album and Best Surround Sound Album.

Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2007: "LOVE really does feel fresh in a way that other latter-day Beatles products like Let It Be... Naked and even the Anthology collections haven't, quite. Freed from the need to adhere to chronology or chart success like the 10-million-selling 1's collection of a few years back, this instantly replaces that uninspired hits set as the album you'd give a kid who needs to discover the Beatles for the first time. It also manages to be the album you'd give the jaded boomer who's hearing these songs for the ten thousandth time."^[49]

In 2017, Uncut ranked the album at number 75 in their list of "The 101 Weirdest Albums of All Time".^[17]

All tracks written by Lennon–McCartney, except where noted.

1. "Because" – 2:44
2. "Get Back" – 2:05
3. "Glass Onion" – 1:20
4. "Eleanor Rigby" (with "Julia" transition) – 3:05
5. "I Am the Walrus" – 4:28
6. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" – 1:22
7. "Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" – 1:54
8. "Gnik Nus" – 0:55
9. "Something" (with "Blue Jay Way" transition) (George Harrison) – 3:29
10. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter" – 3:22
11. "Help!" – 2:18
12. "Blackbird/Yesterday" – 2:31
13. "Strawberry Fields Forever" – 4:31
14. "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" (Harrison/Lennon–McCartney) – 3:07
15. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" – 4:10
16. "Octopus's Garden" (Richard Starkey) – 3:18
17. "Lady Madonna" – 2:56
18. "Here Comes the Sun" (with "The Inner Light" transition) (Harrison) – 4:18
19. "Come Together/Dear Prudence" (with "Cry Baby Cry" transition) – 4:45
20. "Revolution" – 2:14 (CD version) / 3:23 (DVD and iTunes version)
21. "Back in the U.S.S.R." – 1:53 (CD version) / 2:34 (DVD and iTunes version)
22. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (Harrison) – 3:46
23. "A Day in the Life" – 5:08
24. "Hey Jude" – 3:58
25. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" – 1:22
26. "All You Need Is Love" – 3:39

Digital bonus tracks

27. "The Fool on the Hill" – 3:30
28. "Girl" – 2:43

• All Together Now, a documentary following the creation of the Cirque du Soleil show and its soundtrack
• Cirque du Soleil discography, a complete list of Cirque du Soleil's music releases with track listings
• List of best-selling remix albums worldwide
• Outline of the Beatles
• The Beatles timeline