Rarities (1980 The Beatles Album) - 1978

1978

Rarities is a British compilation album featuring a selection of songs by The Beatles. The album was originally released as part of The Beatles Collection, a box set featuring all other Beatles records, but was later released individually. The album has not been released on CD, but all of the tracks are available on the double CD compilation Past Masters.

Rarities was conceived to include lesser known songs that were not included on any other original Beatles album — these included B-sides of singles, two German language recordings, the tracks from an EP with exclusive material, a song recorded for the American market and a version of "Across the Universe" that had previously appeared on a World Wildlife Fund charity record.

The choice of selections seems to assume that the customer already has all the regular issue British albums (i.e., the albums included in the 1978 boxed set) plus the The Beatles/1962-1966 (the "Red Album"), the The Beatles/1967-1970 (the "Blue Album"), and Magical Mystery Tour but not A Collection of Beatles Oldies or Hey Jude. Such a collector would own copies of every song in the entire Beatles catalogue except for all the songs provided on Rarities. (Such a collector, however, would still be missing the original single version of "Love Me Do." This track, which went out-of-print in the fall of 1963, was not available anywhere until included on the 1980 American album, The Beatles Rarities. It was finally made available again in Britain in 1982 on a "Love Me Do" 12-single that also featured the common version of "Love Me Do" as well as "P.S. I Love You.")

The album was released 2 November 1978 in Britain, as part of the British edition of The Beatles Collection boxed set. It was also issued in 12 October 1979 in the United Kingdom as a stand-alone album.