Magical Mystery Tour [Remastered]

1	Magical Mystery Tour
2	The Fool On The Hill
3	Flying
4	Blue Jay Way
5	Your Mother Should Know
6	I Am The Walrus
7	Hello, Goodbye
8	Strawberry Fields Forever
9	Penny Lane
10	Baby You're A Rich Man
11	All You Need Is Love
12	Magical Mystery Tour Documentary

Barnes & Noble

No one has ever claimed it's the Beatles best album, but it undeniably contains some of their most magnificent music. That seeming conundrum exists because Magical Mystery Tour isn't really an album per se, but rather a cobbled together mix of the soundtrack to the wildly uneven 1967 made for TV movie of the same name (released as a 45 RPM double EP in England) and single hits from earlier in the year. The soundtrack songs, perhaps because they were written as incidental music (including "Flying," the band's only instrumental and the only track credited to all four Beatles) are mostly slight, if charming, with the lovely if sentimental "Fool on the Hill" being the standout. But the meat of the album are the just-pre and just-post Sgt. Pepper singles - "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Penny Lane," "Hello Goodbye," and "I Am the Walrus," all of which are either incredibly innovative or masterpieces or both. Sublime bonus: "All You Need is Love," an ode whose message may or may not be true, but whose self-referential montage finale (ending with a chorus of "She Loves You") is unquestionably the precise moment when a rock-and-roll record first flirted with post-modernism. Steve Simels

All Music Guide

The U.S. version of the soundtrack for the Beatles' ill-fated British television special embellished the six songs that were found on the British Magical Mystery Tour double EP with five other cuts from their 1967 singles. (The CD version of the record has now been standardized worldwide as the 11 tracks found on the American version.) The psychedelic sound is very much in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, and even spacier in parts (especially the sound collages of "I Am the Walrus"). Unlike Sgt. Pepper, there's no vague overall conceptual/thematic unity to the material, which has made Magical Mystery Tour suffer slightly in comparison. Still, the music is mostly great, and "Penny Lane," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "All You Need Is Love," and "Hello Goodbye" were all huge, glorious, and innovative singles. The ballad "The Fool on the Hill," though only a part of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack, is also one of the most popular Beatle tunes from the era. Richie Unterberger