The Beatles on Ed Sullivan - H 2013
CBS Photo ArchiveThis article first appeared on Billboard.com
With the 50th anniversary of “Beatlemania” arriving early next year, Capitol Records will re-release all of 13 the Beatles’ American releases in a set titled The U.S. Albums.
The set drops Jan. 21 in North America and features reissues of the band’s 13 American albums — albums that often held different track lists, song mixes, titles, and art than their U.K. counterparts. Five of them (listed below) have never been available on CD before. Pre-orders are available here.
The collection begins with 1964’s Meet the Beatles! and concludes with 1970’s Hey Jude, though all albums except from the latter fall between the years 1964 and 1966, when the band most often released differing albums in the U.S. and Britain.
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The 13 CDs come with carefully-replicated album art (including the albums’ inner sleeves), along with a 64-page booklet with photos and original LP artwork. All titles come in mono and stereo, except The Beatles’ Story and Hey Jude, which are stereo only.
For a limited time, the CDs (with the exception of the audio commentary album The Beatles’ Story) all titles will be available individually as well.
Weeks after the Jan. 21 release of the box set, the music world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in America on Feb. 7, 1964, when the quartet famously touched down in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. Two nights later, they made their legendary 5-song performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, and on Feb. 11, they played their first U.S. concert at Washington, DC’s Washington Coliseum.
A two-hour special titled The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute To The Beatles, will air on CBS on Feb. 9 at 8 PM (ET), marking the exact 50-year anniversary of the Sullivan performance.
Here’s a full list of the 13 albums included:
Meet The Beatles! (1964)
The Beatles’ Second Album (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1964) *
Something New (1964)
The Beatles’ Story (1964) *
Beatles ’65 (1965)
The Early Beatles (1965)
Beatles VI (1965)
Help! (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1965)
Rubber Soul (1965)
Yesterday And Today (1966) *
Revolver (1966) *
Hey Jude (1970) *
* American version previously unavailable on CD
