Beatles Remasters Pack a Wallop

The Beatles just got better: every one of their original albums and a batch of collected singles has been remastered, boosting the quality to the level “the Beatles themselves would have heard and intended,” writes Matt Hurwitz in the Washington Post. The stereo CDs remind us that the Beatles were a “rock band”: these recordings pack a punch not heard on the older discs.

“You can now hear John Lennon's raucous vocal in all its powerfully shredded glory on 'Twist and Shout',” writes Hurwitz. In the past, Paul McCartney’s bass was so powerful it had to be toned down in mastering to keep the needle on the record player. Now, we can finally hear its full range. The new recordings remove pops and clicks not made by the Beatles, "but you can still hear (Ringo) Starr's squeaky bass pedal on 1963's 'All I've Got to Do.'" After all, says one engineer, "We weren't trying to change history." (More Beatles stories.)