PLEASE PLEASE ME  -  THE BEATLES

YEAR:  1963
LABEL:  Parlophone
TRACK LISTING:  I Saw Her Standing There,  Misery,  Anna (Go To Him),  Chains,  Boys,  Ask Me Why,  Please Please Me,  Love Me Do,  P.S. I Love You,  Baby It's You,  Do You Want To Know A Secret,  A Taste of Honey,  There's A Place,  Twist and Shout
IMPRESSIONS:  50 years ago today, the Beatles first album was released and we've now had a half century of Beatlemania!  The importance of this album's released has been talked about and examined enough by others so that I need not really go into it here.  If you're reading this music blog at all, you don't need the likes of me to tell you why the first Beatles album is important.  Surely this album must be considered one of the "big bangs" in music history.  There would of course be much better Beatles albums but no other can stand as the first.
MY FAVOURITE TRACKS:  I Saw Her Standing There,  Chains,  Ask Me Why,  Please Please Me,  Love Me Do,  P.S. I Love You,  Baby It's You,  Twist and Shout
FACT SHEET:  PLEASE PLEASE ME is the Beatles' first album.  The album was quickly rushed out by their record label to capitalise on the band's singles-chart success; at the time the usual routine was to release an album only after enough hit singles existed to fill it.  It would mainly be the influence of the Beatles later in their career which would change the music industry from focussing on songs to emphasizing albums.  Eight of the fourteen songs on the album are composed by John Lennon & Paul McCartney with the remainder being covers.  In order to fill the album, George Martin essentially had the Beatles record their live song list.  The album was released in the U.S. on Vee-Jay Records as "INTRODUCING THE BEATLES" in 1964 and later on Capitol Records as "THE EARLY BEATLES"; it would not be issued as "PLEASE PLEASE ME" until it appeared on compact disc.  The cover photo is by Angus McBean and features the Beatles looking down the stairwell of EMI's London headquarters in Manchester Square.  In 1969, the Beatles asked McBean to recreate the cover photo for their "GET BACK" album but the photo would actually appear on their greatest hits collection "1967-1970".  In 2013, to mark the 50th anniversary of the album, a selection of modern-day artists re-recorded the entire album in one day (the time it took to record the original 50 years earlier) and the tracks were broadcast on BBC Radio 2 (with a "making of" documentary airing on BBC television).