Even with a recent wave of new Beatles Anthology material – both on record and in a remastered version of the multi-part documentary on Disney+ – it appears there’s always something new to learn about The Fab Four and the work they did. A newly-announced collectible puts that in extraordinary focus: a collection of score manuscripts from the personal archive of their producer George Martin, covering The Beatles and beyond. Announced last weekend to mark what would have been Martin’s 100th birthday on January 3, George Martin: The Scores will offer three volumes…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: The Beatles, “Anthology Collection”
1995: Bill Clinton was President of the U.S., John Major was Prime Minister of the U.K., phones weren’t yet smart, Braveheart won Best Picture, the O.J. trial was on everyone’s mind, Jerry Garcia died, and the biggest songs of the year were Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” (U.S.) and Robson and Jerome’s “Unchained Melody/White Cliffs of Dover” (U.K.). In November, the band that changed pop music forever launched its first major archival project at a time when such vault deep dives weren’t yet (so) commonplace. The Beatles Anthology was a true multimedia venture, encompassing…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Step Into Christmas: UMe Preps Holiday Singles Box, Expansion of Connie Francis’ Holiday Album
With the spookiest holidays of the fall now in the rear view mirror (that’s right: Halloween and Election Day!), there’s nothing wrong with looking ahead to the Christmas music season and checking out a pair of now-available titles from Universal Music Group spotlighting some of their classic holiday hits and an album by one of catalogue’s biggest success stories this year. UMe is selling a nifty collection of more than a dozen seasonal 7″ singles in a collectible carrying case. This Classic Holiday Singles Box features Christmas perennials spanning from the ’40s to…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Release Round-Up: Week of October 10
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today! As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Power to the People (Capitol/UMR) 9CD/3BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store 4LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Links TBD / Official Store 2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store 1CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store One of the most incendiary periods of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life together is being explored anew in a new 9CD/3Blu-ray box set. Power to…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Free As a Bird: The Beatles ‘Anthology’ Gets Remixed and Expanded in New Box Set (UPDATED 9/16/2025)
The next archival project from The Beatles is a celebration of their most major archival project, with a newly reissued and (slightly) expanded edition of their Anthology series coming to audio and video formats this fall. Anthology Collection will include remastered editions of the original three collections of rarities and outtakes compiled by George Martin and released through 1995 and 1996, available across six CDs or nine LPs. Martin’s son Giles, who remastered those albums, also curates a new collection, Anthology 4, across a further two CDs or three LPs. Anthology 4 is drawn mostly from…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Free As a Bird: The Beatles ‘Anthology’ Gets Remixed and Expanded in New Box Set
The next archival project from The Beatles is a celebration of their most major archival project, with a newly reissued and (slightly) expanded edition of their Anthology series coming to audio and video formats this fall. Anthology Collection will include remastered editions of the original three collections of rarities and outtakes compiled by George Martin and released through 1995 and 1996, available across six CDs or nine LPs. Martin’s son Giles, who remastered those albums, also curates a new collection, Anthology 4, across a further two CDs or three LPs. Anthology 4 is drawn mostly from…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s New Live Box Set Showcases ‘Sometime in New York City’ and Elsewhere
One of the most incendiary periods of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life together is about to be re-explored in a new 9CD/3Blu-ray box set coming on October 10 (one day after what would have been Lennon’s 85th birthday) from Capitol Records/UMe. Power to the People features 123 tracks (90 of which are previously unreleased) to tell the full story of Lennon and Ono’s political activism, spanning the prolific period between 1969’s anthem “Give Peace a Chance” and 1972’s controversial live album Sometime in New York City as well as that year’s…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
The Second Disc’s Guide to Record Store Day 2025: Our Favorite Picks
Tomorrow, Record Store Day is once again upon us! It’s that time of year where music lovers and vinyl flippers get together at their favorite physical music retailers and wait in line to snag some treasured albums – almost all of which are pressed on vinyl instead of CD (or, you know, sold on secondary marketplaces for above their retail value). This year, the list tops out at over 300 titles, so there’s very nearly something for everybody. It wasn’t easy to narrow our choices down to around 20 titles, but here…
Categories:
Genres:
Elvis Costello, Elton John, John Lennon, Sting Feature on UMG’s Record Store Day Slate
Universal Music Group’s 2025 Record Store Day roster is heavy on British rockers: Elvis Costello, John Lennon, Elton John, Sting, Queen, Mark Knopfler, and The Verve among them! But there’s also some highly-anticipated items from The Killers and Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and Passengers, a.k.a. U2 and Brian Eno, among the other highlights. Visit RecordStoreDay.com for the full list of participating retailers you can visit on Saturday, April 12, to join in the festivities. Elvis Costello, The Kings of America Live At The Royal Albert Hall (Third Man – limited to 2,000 units) EC…
Try to See Things Their Way: Ace Preps ‘Here, There and Everywhere,’ Third Collection of Beatles Covers Through a Black Lens
As fans prepare for the release of the new Disney+ documentary Beatles ’64, chronicling The Fab Four’s legendary inaugural trip to America, U.K. label Ace Records has an exciting release coming that same weekend, featuring nearly two dozen Black artists paying tribute to a series of songbooks that owed so much to soul music and rhythm and blues traditions. Here, There and Everywhere: Black America Sings Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, available November 29, is the seventh of Ace’s “Black America Sings” releases, which began with a 2011 entry on Bob Dylan and…
The Weekend Stream: October 12, 2024
Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc’s review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. The Christmas creep may continue, but we’ve got plenty more where that came from: a new spin on a John Lennon classic, rare remixes from David Bowie, a live triumph from Céline Dion, some thrills and chills from the Alien universe – and first off, a charitable compilation built for a good cause in the wake of our country’s severest storms of late. Various Artists, Cardinals At the Window (Music’s Promise) (Bandcamp)…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
All Their Loving: New Mono Vinyl Box Set Celebrates The Beatles’ First American Albums
This year’s Beatles catalogue title will showcase the albums that introduced American audiences to the sound of the Fab Four. 1964 U.S. Albums in Mono will include new vinyl remasters of six albums distributed by Capitol Records within the first year of the British band’s arrival in New York City. Uniquely drawn from the first four Beatles albums in the U.K. and other single and EP material, these albums will be pressed on 180-gram vinyl and housed in faithful reproductions of their original jackets and inner sleeves, with the addition of a…
Review: John Lennon, “Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection”
It’s been quite a while since the last John Lennon “Ultimate” box set. Imagine arrived in 2018, followed by Plastic Ono Band in 2021; the multi-disc solo anthology Gimme Some Truth: The Ultimate Mixes was released in between, in 2020. Anticipation justly ran high for this year’s Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection, a 6CD/2BD set exploring every aspect of the solo Beatle’s 1974 fourth album. (The politically-charged Some Time in New York City, a hybrid live/studio LP from John and Yoko, has been overlooked in the series.) With five different presentations of…
Release Round-Up: Week of July 12
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today! As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. John Lennon, Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection (Capitol/UMe) 6CD/2BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 9LP/6CD/2BD Super Deluxe Box: Official Store 2CD (includes contents of CD 1 and 6, below): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP (includes contents of CD 1 and 6, below): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada (TBD) John Lennon’s fourth solo album Mind Games will receive a deluxe box set this summer packed with new mixes of the album’s contents as well…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Journey to Nutopia: John Lennon’s ‘Mind Games’ Set for Expansion This Summer
John Lennon’s fourth solo album Mind Games will receive a deluxe box set this summer packed with new mixes of the album’s contents as well as a dozen unreleased outtakes. Available July 12, the 6CD/2BD box will take a new, immersive look at Lennon’s sessions at New York’s Record Plant in the summer of 1973, a turbulent time that resulted in a somewhat divisive effort in his post-Beatles discography. Included in the set are many assemblies of the original 12-track album, produced by Lennon and Yoko Ono’s son Sean in collaboration with an…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
The Second Disc’s Guide to Record Store Day 2024: Our Essential Picks
Tomorrow, Record Store Day is once again upon us! It’s that time of year where music lovers and vinyl flippers get together at their favorite physical music retailers and wait in line to snag some treasured albums – almost all of which are pressed on vinyl instead of CD (or, you know, sold on secondary marketplaces for above their retail value). This year, the list tops out at over 350 titles, so there’s very nearly something for everybody. It wasn’t easy to narrow our choices down to around 20 titles, but here…
Mind Games: Universal’s Record Store Day Lineup Includes Beatles, Elton, The Who, John Lennon, Charlie Parker, U2, Ringo Starr, “Wicked”, Frank Zappa, More
Continuing our look through this year’s Record Store Day list, here is a glance at twenty-one releases from the Universal family of labels. All descriptions are taken from the labels. If you are interested in any of these titles, they will be available at your local record store on April 20. Head over to recordstoreday.com for a list of participating retailers. U.K. readers, please visit recordstoreday.co.uk and Canadian readers, please visit recordstoredaycanada.ca. The Beatles, “I Saw Her Standing There”/”I Want To Hold Your Hand”/”She Loves You”/”Til There Was You” (4 Individual 3″…
Now and Then: Unheard Outtake, New Mixes Added to Classic Beatles Compilations
On April 2, 1973, the first career-spanning compilations by The Beatles – broken up for three years – were released. Nicknamed for the colored borders around Angus McBean’s iconic photos of The Fab Four (taken six years apart) leaning over a stairwell at EMI’s offices in London, the “Red” (The Beatles 1962-1966) and “Blue” (The Beatles 1967-1970) albums offered on eight sides of vinyl a holistic view of the group’s unbelievable discography: 54 hit singles, B-sides and treasured album cuts that would offer a perfect primer for new generations of Beatlemaniacs. Five…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
The Weekend Stream: October 14, 2023
Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there’s plenty of great new/old music to float you into the weekend. There’s a plethora of breakouts from box sets new to streaming, from John Lennon to Prince – plus rare remixes by Cyndi Lauper and a surprise treat from a beloved theme park. John Lennon, Imagine (The Ultimate Mixes / Deluxe) / Imagine (The Elements Mixes) / Imagine (The Evolution Documentary) / Imagine (The Raw Studio Mixes) / Imagine (The Out-Takes / Deluxe)…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Review: The Beatles, “Revolver” (2022)
I took a ride, I didn’t know what I would find there… George Harrison’s snarling takedown of the “Taxman” opened The Beatles’ Revolver with a powerful sting. The so-called Quiet Beatle took on the first-person role with the relish of (and a musical nod to) a Batman villain. Though 1965’s folk-rock-influenced Rubber Soul had seen the Fab Four’s songwriting grow by leaps and bounds, Revolver matched the songwriting strides with revelatory studio processes including ADT (Artificial Double Tracking), tape loops, close miking, varispeed and reversed tapes, and non-traditional instrumentation including sitar, tamboura,…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
And Your Bird Can Sing! The Beatles’ “Revolver” Goes Super Deluxe in October
The Beatles’ seventh studio album – and the bridge between Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – 1966’s Revolver is recognized as one of the Fab Four’s most groundbreaking as well as significant albums. With producer George Martin, the group employed studio wizardry to bring their new songs to life – tape loops, automatic double tracking, close miking, use of varispeed and reversed tapes, among other techniques that would soon be imitated by countless others – as well as non-traditional instrumentation. It didn’t hurt, of course, that all of…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Review: The Beatles, “Let It Be” [Various Formats]
Everybody had a hard year/Everybody had a good time… The Beatles’ twelfth and final studio LP may have been titled Let It Be, but that particular admonition has been all but ignored over the years. The album – recorded before, but released after, 1969’s Abbey Road – was in some respects a step backward from the band’s previous, experimental LPs as they sought a “back to basics” sound that didn’t involve overdubs and studio wizardry. Ultimately, though, that approach was rejected. The album that began life mixed by engineer Glyn Johns as…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
The Beatles “Get Back” In New Hardcover Book Chronicling the “Let It Be” Sessions
A book about a film about an album? The new coffee table book from Callaway Arts and Entertainment and Apple Corps, The Beatles: Get Back, is essentially that: a hardcover, 240-page tome based on the film footage shot in the buildup to The Beatles’ final album, 1970’s Let It Be. Get Back was, of course, the name of the first version of Let It Be. It’s also the name of director Peter Jackson’s upcoming three-part, six-hour documentary (the first part of which premieres November 25 on the Disney+ streaming service) to which…
The Weekend Stream: September 18, 2021
While The Second Disc prides itself on connecting people to reissues and box sets they can keep on their shelves, it’s no secret that listening audiences are also digital – catalogue music lovers, too – and our passion is connecting people to music from the past that they might adore. So we’ve introduced a new feature: The Weekend Stream, which focuses on hidden gems that recently made it to digital channels that might make your playlists a little brighter! The Beatles, Get Back (Take 8) EP (Apple/Capitol/UMe) (iTunes / Amazon / Spotify)…
Categories:
Formats:
Genres:
Ace Round-Up, Part One: Spotlight on “The Chips Moman Songbook” and “Jon Savage’s 1972-1976”
Ace Records has had quite a 2021, from collections spotlighting the songs of Lou Reed and Donovan through this past week’s releases from Petula Clark, late producer Norman Whitfield, and the ladies of Motown. Today, we’re taking a look at a pair of recent releases from the venerable label. Lincoln Wayne “Chips” Moman (1937-2016) may never have become a household name, but the music he helped create certainly did. A guitarist, producer, songwriter, and engineer, Moman pioneered the sound of Stax Records before forming his own American Sound Studio in Memphis. Ace…
