The Beatles’ ‘Anthology 4’: Barrel Shavings for a Hot Take World
by Colin Fleming
Perusers of Beatles-based digital forums will be overly familiar with the attempted “hot take,” in which someone makes what’s posited as a convention-detonating declaration, but is in truth meant to be a source of attention for that person.
These are nadir times for Beatles discourse, as they are for much else. I first got into the Beatles at age 14. This was before the internet. If you wanted to learn, that meant a trip to the library. It meant microfilm. Work was involved. You couldn’t log on and type some words.
And yet, I see many self-professed Beatles experts without a fraction of the knowledge that used to comprise the barely-worth-mentioning basics. People who take to Reddit to discuss Paul McCartney’s lead vocal on “I’m a Loser,” never mind that he didn’t have one.
In a sense, Anthology 4, released on Nov. 21, 2025, is for these people who often perform fandom, if you will, as an attempt to strong-arm themselves into the possession of an identity, as well as this state of affairs. It’s the Beatles release that the world deserves, and that’s not a good thing.
Watch the official 2025 Anthology series trailer
If you’re going to be putting out Beatles packages at later and later dates, they need to change how we understand this band. Grant an edifying perspective. Otherwise, you’re merely grabbing at cash. Trying to turn barrel shavings from the underside of the bottom into dollar bills. One feels like the Beatles—or Beatles music, anyway—should be above that.
The set’s 36 tracks contain many that have already gained release on assorted archival sets, where they better belonged. Throughout, we encounter decided lesser lights like instrumental versions of “Something,” “Hey Bulldog,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “The Fool on the Hill” and a 26- second snippet of “I Will.”
Why would you pick a single cut from the January 1969 rooftop gig, a performance that must be experienced in full or else you’re basically flipping channels randomly? The “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” studio jam is fine enough as a break in the lugubrious action on a Get Back bootleg, but this is a front-and-center release, an intended bell cow, which means that each track has heavy reputational lifting to do.
In theory. But we can throw theory out the window that the daring woman just came through, because what we’re really dealing with is an attempt to further monetize the Anthology brand-label itself, which has its own vintage quality, harkening back as it does to the mid-1990s. In a world where many people couldn’t tell you when Vietnam took place, never mind WWII, or the Civil War, that’s “oldies” territory. And “buzz-y.” Replete with nostalgia.
Call it second or third wave Beatles nostalgia. There is nostalgia for the original Beatles corpus for those who experienced it in real time. An additional late 1970s nostalgia with the release of the likes of Love Songs, Live at the Hollywood Bowl and the gray market Star Club tapes, and then CD-era Beatles nostalgia capped by 1995’s Anthology.
The Beatles had few missteps during their time together. Magical Mystery Tour was seen as one of them, but it’s not that bad as the Boxing Day fare for which it was intended. What’s happening now, though, is unbecoming of the Beatles, just as the hot takes and the derogation of knowledge are altering our ability to appreciate and experience art as that which it most truly is.
Here’s how Anthology 4 best functions for those in the know, meaning, people who are informed and care about the art: By being scraped so that its relevant contents are reapportioned to bootleg sets that one can locate and download that assemble all of the Beatles unofficial studio recordings (meaning, that which the Beatles didn’t sanction during the years 1962-1970) in chronological order and definitive fashion, with precise notes.
So what’s illuminating on Anthology 4? The obvious “Gotta hear that” number is the first take of “In My Life.” If no Beatles studio outtakes had ever gotten out and you were invited to submit a wish list, this is what a keen listener would’ve had near the top.
Lennon wrestled with the song’s composition, having first gone large—ticking off the names of myriad Liverpool spots—and then cutting back to something elementally human. Unsurprisingly, the song is stripped further down in this incarnation, which allows us to hear just how important McCartney’s harmony vocal proved. “In My Life”—and much of Rubber Soul—is prime Lennon, but McCartney was a marvel in how readily and presumably easily he understood what to do for someone else’s song and moment.
There are pleasing curios like the first take of George Harrison’s “I Need You,” but when the song itself is inessential, an outtake of that song should instead be issued as part of a package featuring work from the same sessions. Then, it’s like we’re in on a grander idea than merely “I Need You” itself.
A first take of “Matchbox”—a dark horse of the Beatles’ career, which served them well in Hamburg, on the BBC and with their finest EP in Long Tall Sally—is an agreeable barrelhouse of rhythm, but the rest of this set’s true value stems from its A Hard Day’s Night material: takes four and five of “Tell Me Why” and take 11 of “If I Fell.”
Related: The same author on the Beatles’ 1963 BBC sessions
The Beatles—despite what parroted conventional “wisdom” tells you—were never more inventive than on their third LP. If you had to pick a single studio album by the band to give to an alien so he’d get the best sense of what the Beatles were about, A Hard Day’s Night would be that album. It isn’t Revolver. It isn’t Sgt. Pepper. Definitely isn’t the White Album.
The Beatles at the launch of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, in Brian Epstein’s house, London, May 19, 1967. (Photo © APPLE CORPS LTD; used with permission)
“Tell Me Why” numbers among those songs that you would have a hard time imagining what the various takes sounded like. Obviously, it isn’t a product of studio amalgamation and sorcery, but it kind of makes you think it was, before you tell yourself not to be silly.
The thing swings arguably harder than any Beatles songs, excepting their cover of “Soldier of Love” and “Yer Blues,” which was a markedly different manner of creation indeed. Delirious, infectious joy. Manic doo-wop, with a pinch of Ellington via the Brill Building. You can tell how much they love the sound they’re making in these outtakes. What a blast. They’d never be quite like they are here ever again.
“If I Fell” is the love song that wasn’t—after all, the singer’s promise to love is built on a series of stipulations, with an aim also of hurting the person who already rejected his love, which we can probably safely call his advances.
Lennon and McCartney’s voices were never better suited to each other than during this timeframe. The duet four years later on “Hey Jude,” wonderful as it is, harkens back to the twined apex that we all seem to climb here. Precious and cherishable.
But also an exception to how Anthology 4 functions. You take a thing seriously, or you don’t. Any attempted middle ground—and that’s being charitable in this case—is bound to be mucky. Then you’re fueling the hot takes and the fandom-as-means-of-garnering-attention approach to the Beatles, by playing your part in enabling a low level of discourse as well as people who are decreasingly serious regarding the music and art they claim to be so very serious about.
Do it right, or don’t do it, a maxim that the Beatles themselves favored over the brief period in which they made their music.
The 12-LP and 8-CD editions of the Beatles’ Anthology Collection are available in the U.S./worldwide here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here. Anthology 4 is available as a standalone 3-LP or 2-CD set in the U.S./worldwide here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here.
Watch the 2025 Anthology announcement video
No Comments so far
Jump into a conversationNo Comments Yet!
You can be the one to start a conversation.