These days single releases are essentially advertisements for albums. Singles tend to be the catchiest, most radio friendly songs on the album and bands send them to radio stations and make videos for them as a way of getting people to buy the album that the single is on.
But The Beatles looked at singles and albums as two separate things. Many of their hugest hit singles were never released on albums and many of their classic albums never included any singles!
This is because back then a lot of people bought singles and then also bought the albums and The Beatles didn’t want their fans to feel cheated by buying the same song twice. Of course over time singles (especially in the US) pretty much died out in importance and this was no longer an issue. Now in the age of downloading, I can imagine a band taking up this strategy again, although I haven’t heard of it happening yet.
Past Masters
Because so many of The Beatles biggest hits were never included on their albums when The Beatles albums were released on CD in the 1980s, there needed to be some way of collecting all of those non-album songs and that’s what the “Past Masters” compilation did. In 1988 it was released as two separate CDs but as a part of the new remastered Beatles Stereo Box Set (and as available for individual purchase) it is being released as a double CD set.
The Past Masters set includes every Beatles song that’s not on one of their 13 official studio albums (which includes the American version of Magical Mystery Tour as it was originally released as just an EP in the UK.)
Songs Included
Among the songs included on this set are “Hey Jude,” “Day Tripper,” “We Can Work It Out,” “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “Lady Madonna,” “She Loves You,” & the single versions of “Get Back,” “Let It Be,” & “Revolution” and an alternate version of “Across The Universe.”
Mono Masters
The “Mono Masters” compilation is basically a mono version of the Past Masters set although there are some small differences in track listing because of some later songs never being mixed in mono (“Let It Be,” “The Ballad of John & Yoko,” & “Old Brown Shoe’) and because of songs from the Yellow Submarine album being included on the Mono Masters set (it’s actually the first time that the mono mixes of “Hey Bulldog,” “It’s All Too Much,” “All Together Now,” & “Only A Northern Song” have been released in mono, ever.)
Essential Part Of Any Beatles Collection
I think it’s clear that these songs are not just “B-Sides” (although some such B-Sides like “Rain” and “This Boy” are awesome, anyway.) These are really essential songs in The Beatles catalog which is why I think the Past/Mono Masters sets are just as essential as any of their classic albums such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album.
