LET IT BE THE BEATLES YEAR SERIAL
LET IT BE THE BEATLES YEAR WINDOWS

Meanwhile, the 100-page hardbound book (whose cover also aligns the bandmembers' faces with the die-cut cover windows) contains a wealth of detailed background notes, recording minutiae, track-by-track analysis, and other related cool Fabs data and visuals-just as every Beatles super-collection deserves, and always gets.

LET IT BE THE BEATLES YEAR WINDOWS

The four die-cut windows for showcasing the faces of each Beatles bandmember through the box cover itself is a nice visual touch, though that does make it difficult to have a big enough contiguous flat-surface space left over for anyone who prefers affixing the included hype sticker on said front cover (like I do). These are in no way minor issues when it comes to us collectors willing to shell out big bucks for these things, ya know. Plus, the Be box opens to the left, meaning the spinal nomenclature is on the right side, and therefore you have to flip the whole bloody thing around backwards in order to have it face toward you for ID purposes when shelved.

LET IT BE THE BEATLES YEAR SERIAL

Pepper and Abbey Road super deluxe boxes are both full-album size.) It continues to mystify me why box set packaging designers don't follow a uniform size and shape footprint for serial historic issuances from the same artist at a bare minimum-especially since that decision, or lack thereof, continues to challenge those of us who have to shelve literally hundreds of box sets that don't align dimensionally.

The black-hued Be box itself measures 10 inches wide x 12 inches high-which, it must be pointed out, is actually a bit smaller than the comparable super deluxe White Album box set by Вј inch in width, and ВЅ inch in height. (More on the Let It Be surround and Atmos mixes to come later in this broadcast, er, post.) The BD houses no video content and no Easter Eggs to speak of, possibly because of the breadth of what's included in the Peter Jackson-curated Get Back docuseries on Disney+. The sixth disc is the Blu-ray containing 24-bit/48kHz Dolby Atmos, 24/96 DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, and 24/96 PCM Stereo mixes of the main album courtesy The Beatles' right-hand surround sound man Giles Martin-replete with an able assist from Sam Okell, a golden-eared mixing maestro in his own right. Disc 1 holds the remastered version of the core album's 12 tracks Discs 2 and 3-subtitled Apple Sessions and Rehearsals and Apple Jams, respectively-serve up a combo of 39 songs and dialogue offerings between them Disc 4 boasts original engineer Glyn Johns' never fully approved but still intriguing Get Back stereo LP mixes and Disc 5 encompasses just four songs in total, consisting of two additional Johns 1970 mixes and a pair of 2021 mixes on a disc more correctly designated as an EP. Five CDs comprise 57 songs total, 27 of them heretofore officially unreleased. Never let it be said Apple Corps ever skimp on how they do box sets, and the Super Deluxe Edition of Let It Be is no exception. The White Album), and September 1969's aforementioned Abbey Road, all of which contain many multidiscs of well-worthy bonus, alternate, and/or unreleased tracks-and, of course, the respective Holy Grail Dolby Atmos mixes of all three of those core albums on Blu-ray to boot. It's the fourth such all-in, all-out Beatles collection following mega-expanded editions of June 1967's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, November 1968's The Beatles (a.k.a. Those of us who have a special affinity for Let It Be-while I continue to cherish my original 1970 Apple LP, it was also one of the very first CDs I ever bought back in 1987-are happy to see how this album finally gets its true due thanks to a lavish 5CD/1BD box set. 9 fever dream 'Across the Universe,' the we've-still-got-it rooftop concert teaser-pleaser 'I've Got a Feeling,' and the rumble/shuffle sneer and cheer of 'Get Back' among them. In the ensuing 51-plus years, Let It Be has continued to take its fair share of knocks even though it contains a score of all-time Fabs favorites like the ever-enduring patented Paul McCartney piano-ballad title track, John Lennon's ethereal pre-No. Could May 1970's Let It Be possibly be The Beatles' most underrated core studio album-and is such a thing even possible? To be sure, when Let It Be initially dropped as the free-thinking 1960s gave way to the much grittier 1970s, the album was seen as an imperfect endpoint for a once-in-a-lifetime epoch in popular music-whereas September 1969's Abbey Road, which was actually completed after the Let It Be sessions but was still released eight months ahead of that album, actually serves as a better-suited final exclamation point and nod to their fans as the final, definitive statement of the fully active Beatles era.

Let it be the beatles year