The Beatles - Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul is where the Beatles stopped writing for screaming crowds and started writing for themselves. Released in December 1965, it was the first album the band conceived as a complete artistic statement rather than a collection of singles, and the whole of rock music took notice.

The songs are warmer, stranger, and more personal than anything they had cut before. George Harrison's sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" introduced Indian instrumentation to a mass Western audience, "In My Life" found John Lennon looking back with startling tenderness, and "Nowhere Man" left love songs behind entirely. Paul McCartney's fuzz bass on "Think for Yourself" and the soul-inflected groove of "Drive My Car" show a band hungry to push the studio further.

Brian Wilson has said Rubber Soul inspired him to make Pet Sounds, which in turn pushed the Beatles toward Sgt. Pepper. Few albums sit so squarely at the center of a creative arms race, and it still sounds fresh sixty years on.

This 180-gram stereo LP is taken from the acclaimed 2009 remasters and housed in a faithful reproduction of the original Parlophone artwork. A cornerstone of any record collection.