Music
Unlike the contemporaneous British Beatles albums, The Beatles' Second Album is composed exclusively of uptempo numbers, and for this reason is a favourite of some Beatles aficionados and rock critics. "The Beatles' Second Album stands as probably best pure rock & roll album ever issued of the group's music", wrote Allmusic.
Songs for this album were compiled from four different UK releases. Included were the five remaining tracks from the group's second British LP With the Beatles. Those songs were left off the previous Capitol album Meet the Beatles!. Also included were "Thank You Girl" (the B-side to the British single "From Me to You"), the single "She Loves You" / "I'll Get You", "You Can't Do That" from the A Hard Day's Night soundtrack in the UK, and two new songs, "Long Tall Sally" and "I Call Your Name," both released a month later in the UK on the Long Tall Sally EP. Also, the Capitol Records engineers, headed by record executive Dave Dexter, Jr, added a lot of echo and reverb to the stereo versions to give the music more of a "live" feel. This is much more noticeable on the "With the Beatles" tracks, as they were recorded in two-track stereo.
Worth noting is the inclusion of the stereo version of "Thank You Girl," as The Beatles' Second Album featured the only "true" stereo version of the song released on any US or UK album for over 40 years, until another stereo version of the song was released on the 2009 remastered edition of Past Masters (The Beatles Second Album stereo version of "Thank You Girl" was also included on The Beatles Beat, a German release). Since some echo was added, this version remains a bit of a rarity. The Capitol album mix is also unique in that its version contains three additional harmonica riffs, two during the bridge and one at the very end of the song. For its American-album debut, Capitol took this stereo version and transferred it into a two-to-one stereo-to-mono mixdown for the mono album release, thus creating an alternative mono mix of the song. The stereo version of "Money" also underwent the same two-to-one stereo-to-mono mixdown for this album, thus creating another alternative mono mix. In the mono version of "I Call Your Name", the cowbell comes in at the very beginning of the song, whereas in the stereo version it comes in after the beginning of the vocal. Harrison's opening 12-string guitar phrase is also different between the mono and stereo versions. In "Long Tall Sally", the stereo version has echo while the mono version is lacking it. The mono version of "You Can't Do That" is different to the one released on the British album "A Hard Day's Night" for unknown reasons.
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