The Fab Four Anthologies
It's almost impossible to believe that the first three volumes of The Beatles Anthology (and documentary) are about to turn 30 years old. This will make it even harder to believe: they were released just 25 years after The Beatles broke up. And now they're back – well, a fourth anthology:
The fourth volume of the band’s “Anthology Collection” of recordings (including 13 new demos) is arriving, along with a capstone episode to the 1995 eight-part documentary and a 25th-anniversary edition of “The Beatles Anthology” book.
The album, “Anthology 4,” includes new mixes of “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.” The release will accompany remastered versions of the first three “Anthology” albums as well, and will be available Nov. 21.
Unlike those first volumes, it sounds like this won't feature any new songs – since the "last" Beatles song, "Now and Then", featuring vocals from John Lennon shortly before he was murdered in 1980, came out a couple years ago. Still, no one will be upset about more Beatles outtakes and footage. This one will include footage of Paul, Ringo, and George – who passed away about six years later, which itself was already 24 years ago – creating the original Anthology.
I recall that first Anthology so well as the three volumes were released over the entire span that I was 14 years old – basically the prime of when music imprints on your brain. I also recall them being very expensive, with each volume featuring two CDs. A friend had them and we listened to them endlessly. I didn't actually "obtain" them until the MP3 revolution had started – I'll leave it to the imagination how I got them. But suffice to say, it took hours and hours on a dial-up modem.
And now, everyone has them. Well, assuming you subscribe to Apple Music, Spotify, or the like. 14 year old me will never not be blown away by this fact of the modern age. I'm sitting here writing this and thinking "boy I miss those albums" and then I recalled, oh, I can just search for them and play them right now, free as a bird. And so I am. Forget AI for a second, this is magic. A magic my children will never understand or sadly appreciate, no matter how many stories I tell them of saving up lunch money for months to buy one album. Just one CD!
We have basically every song ever recorded – including all of the music by The Beatles – available to us on demand at any time. In our pockets, no less. I used to record music off of the radio onto cassette tapes. I would have to rewind and fast forward through commercials. The hours I spent doing this. My god.
One more thing: the four Anthologies will be a nice compliment to the four Beatles movies – all set to be directed by Sam Mendes – which are currently in pre-production. And much like those original Anthologies, it still sounds like Sony intends for each of the movies to be released, slightly staggered, over the course of a year. Though here, the current plan is to release them all over the same month, in April 2028. A sort of binge-able movie theater experiment. That will be wild.
M.G. Siegler