Let It Be: a Swan Song or a Sad Song?

Like no other Beatles release, Let It Be has been re-contextualized, re-evaluated, misunderstood, mythologized, and taken as a piece of a time rather than a piece of art.

55 years ago, it marked a half-assed nail in a coffin that had been wrestling with being shut for far too long. Today, it’s seen as the great collaborative effort that gave us the mammoth Get Back documentary. It’s never just been another Beatles record though, that’s for sure. 

One of my favorite writings about music came from Lester Bangs, where he wrote “Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.” Let It Be holds both these faces, perhaps a million more. They aren’t so much faces as mirrors to the larger idea of The Beatles at any given time and the culture around the album. It’s a shapeshifting album in that way, not a definitive work of its time nor something so experimental it’s lightyears ahead of what anyone else would do for decades. It's a collection of Beatles tunes that are not the best, but still pretty great. Simple, but unable to be replicated by even the most seasoned musicians. Proof that even at their most strung out, uncommunicative moments that they were still razor-sharp songwriters and impeccable musicians, and also that their previous work really was that good because this is much simpler in comparison. An anomaly in other words. A contradiction of contradictions. 

Let It Be has always lived in the shadows of the breakup, the film of the same name, the astronomical success of its title track, and the lack of clarity in what it was. Just a few week before Paul McCartney stated he was done with the Beatles, dissolving their partnership and leaving for good. This came after his solo album, released a month before his press release and to a lot of confused reviews and complicated reactions. The documentary of the making of this album, which showed the boys arguing constantly, picking apart each other's work, and putting on a happy face at the end as they got kicked off the roof of their studio at an impromptu concert. It’s title track, a Paul-led ballad, became an instant success, and one of the band's greatest hits, shadowing the rest of the tracks in a very distinct darkness. There was also the fact that this was about the four-hundredth version of what this album was supposed to be: was it a soundtrack? The boys just messing around reminiscing on simpler times? Was it even really a Beatles album because it was so Paul heavy? This, the bitter media back-and-forth that was beginning to transpire, and the public denousing of the album by all members of the band left it with this really complicated legacy. Were you supposed to like it? Did they even like it? What was the point of release when Abbey Road was the most perfect ending any band, decade, or partnership could ever ask for? What was the point of any of this? 

The 2021 re-evaluation that came along with Get Back was something to behold. The album was suddenly hailed as a light and airy parting piece to the band, showcasing them as boys in a world just not made for them anymore. The songs take on this life of representing their own ideas of this changing world and their connection to it, their connections to each other a small undercurrent of a much bigger wave. It examines this album not as the soundtrack to the breakup but the last great moments together before the story stopped being theirs to share. Two of Us was originally a quite lackluster opener to most, a cute song with simple lyrics, but it felt more like something at home as a solo-Paul album track. Get Back lets us view the songs as a collaboration between John and Paul, something they worked over countless times to sound that effortless - a song that underlined George’s growing distaste in the band and being sidelined. I Me Mine takes on a new context with this as well, showcasing George once more on his own as the other two. We see it less as George unhappy with not getting due credit, but more so as the final bubble over years of having to watch a collaboration that leaves him feeling alone and stranded. These songs are given new meaning, it makes the album become grander because it feels like you understand so much more of what was going on. The Beatles never really needed context to be great, but it always helped make them seem much more compelling.

When I listen to Let It Be, I don’t hear the greatest band of all time delivering their definitive work. I don’t hear songs that speak to the band's creative partnerships or ideals. It seems like The Beatles are trying to be like the rest of the world. When The Band released Music from Big Pink, the rock world was shaken out of its drug-induced sound. The twangy, country grit, the unpolished yet perfected nature of The Band's sound was something that was about to be the trend for the early 70s. Southern rock became huge - short, snappy, simple songs were back to the forefront after a few years of experimentation through the mid 60s. The Beatles had become a studio band, creating albums and songs so detailed and extensive they couldn’t be performed live, or performed live in such ways they were originally intended to be heard. This wasn’t a bad thing, they pushed recording technology twenty years in the future in just three years, but it wasn’t what was "cool" anymore, it wasn’t what everyone else wanted to replicate and do. It goes back to what was said about the world not being made for them anymore, how not only the group but the whole world had changed so quickly that there was suddenly nowhere to go. When they attempted to do the popular thing - stripped back and simple songs - they were out of fashion, out of time. Once that was a signifier of the changed times, but now it was the last death rattle of the once mighty Beatles.

"Mick [Jagger] has said it before, but it's worth repeating: The Beatles are primarily a recording group. Even if they drew the biggest crowds in their era in North America, I think The Beatles passed their performance peak even before they were famous. They are a recording band." - Keith Richards to Rolling Stone magazine, 1969

It becomes even more pronounced when taken into account that Abbey Road was recorded only a few months after Let It Be, and released first. A perfect album in every imaginable way, the perfect ending to a perfect and illustrious career. It became undercut by an album of the band not sure of themselves, exploring their solo sounds, feeling disconnected from the world they once had so much power over. It wasn’t bad, it was just ill-timed, and not the Beatles. Re-evaluated or not, no one can call this a Beatles album in the truest sense of the word. It’s like The White Album, albeit less experimental: four solo artists functioning together in an organized chaos. Let It Be and The Long and Winding Road are two of Paul’s most defining and important pieces of writing. Across the Universe allows John to explore the abstract nature of words in ways he would through his solo career. I Me Mine and For You Blue are George at his most honest, a factor that would come to define his most enduring work. And Ringo, he was there to help along each song, just as he would help each member of the band even as they were all nasty towards each other. There’s no defining Beatles song on the album. Defining songs for Paul, John, and George, yet only in those respective worlds.

Even as their least influential album, it holds weight in the music world. The four square

cover has been replicated countless times,

Queen payed homage with Hot Space, Talking Heads did with Remain in Light, Pop by U2, Damon Albarn twice with The Best of Blur and Demon Days respectively. The title track has become a point of reference for so many piano based stars and songs of the 1970s, artists like Elton John and Billy Joel often find their work compared to it. Fiona Apple and David Bowie covered Across the Universe, both injecting new life and relvence into the song. It highlights the importance of The Beatles pretty beautifully, that even their "worst" album is something so many artists want and aspire towards.

Let it Be wasn’t the grand goodbye of Abbey Road, and it wasn’t as detested and thin as Beatles for Sale, as experimental or important as Sgt. Peppers. It wasn’t much of anything. It was simple, it was something that had years of context sheltered away in a vault, anything that could make what was given as a contractual goodbye seem better in or out of context. They never needed their process to be known for their work to be good, but Let It Be was a much bigger beast than anyone would think. It was the beast the broke the Beatles. 

Let It Be could be a career best for any other band. Each song is perfect. But when your The Beatles, it ends up being a lackluster swan song.

The Beatles performing I've Got A Feeling from Let It Be at thier final performance: