Among Bea­t­les con­nois­seurs, it’s fair game to claim any­thing from Rub­ber Soul to Abbey Road as one’s favorite album. But even with­in that span of the cat­a­log, a hier­ar­chy of acclaim exists, and that hier­ar­chy has been rearranged over the decades. The ecsta­t­ic recep­tion of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band last­ed at least a decade. By the turn of the nine­teen-eight­ies, its imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor Revolver had joined it at the top spot of crit­i­cal regard; twen­ty years after that, Abbey Road had dis­placed Sgt. Pep­per. Now, a full 60 years after it first came out, Revolver is the sin­gle Bea­t­les album held in the high­est esteem — which, nat­u­ral­ly, makes it a seri­ous con­tender for the great­est album ever record­ed.

In his new video above, music YouTu­ber David Hart­ley explains what makes Revolver so beloved by recount­ing the his­to­ry of its pro­duc­tion. As in his pre­vi­ous Bea­t­les videos, he draws on the library of stu­dio out­takes that make audi­ble the evo­lu­tion of each song, as well as on con­tem­po­rary inter­views with the Bea­t­les and their col­lab­o­ra­tors.

Among his most illu­mi­nat­ing sources is engi­neer Geoff Emer­ick­’s mem­oir Here, There, and Every­where — titled, inci­den­tal­ly after one of the songs on this very album, the chal­lenge of whose record­ing he took on at just twen­ty years old. In the event, his youth proved an asset, grant­i­ng him as it did the will­ing­ness not just to exe­cute the Bea­t­les’ “far-out” son­ic ideas, but also to vio­late EMI Stu­dios’ poli­cies against exper­i­men­tal use of its hard­ware in the process.

Indeed, if it was pos­si­ble in 1966, it seems to have been tried in the mak­ing of Revolver. As Hart­ley reveals, “I’m Only Sleep­ing” once fea­tured a vibra­phone, “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” once began with a spo­ken-word intro, and “And Your Bird Can Sing” once kept get­ting inter­rupt­ed by uncon­trol­lable and quite pos­si­bly sub­stance-induced laugh­ter. Nei­ther these nor any of the album’s oth­er now-famil­iar, much-scru­ti­nized songs took straight paths to their final forms. Into a run­time of only 35 min­utes, the Bea­t­les man­aged to put every­thing from “a chil­dren’s sin­ga­long song” to “a song com­plain­ing about all the mon­ey they were pay­ing in tax­es” to “a song about lone­li­ness” to “a song about lazi­ness” — while also trans­mit­ting the “great feel­ing of joy” for which their oeu­vre is known. Revolver’s place in the canon of albums is secure, but will it still be con­sid­ered the band’s best work on its 70th anniver­sary? Tomor­row, as they say, nev­er knows.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Bea­t­les Wrote Their Songs: From Ear­ly Demos to Final Record­ings

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows: How The Bea­t­les Invent­ed the Future With Stu­dio Mag­ic, Tape Loops & LSD

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

The World’s Great­est Song That Sim­ply Shouldn’t Exist: The Mak­ing of The Bea­t­les’ “A Day in the Life”

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

The Kinks’ Ray Davies Reviews the Bea­t­les’ 1966 Album Revolver; Calls It “A Load of Rub­bish”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Cast your mind back to the dis­tant year 2021 and recall, if you will, its music, its fash­ions, the obses­sions of its youth. This prob­a­bly won’t be a dif­fi­cult task, since in most respects — the damp­en­ing effects of the pan­dem­ic notwith­stand­ing — none of those aspects of pop­u­lar cul­ture seem any dif­fer­ent today. Yet rough­ly the same time span sep­a­rat­ed Scott McKen­zie’s “San Fran­cis­co (Be Sure to Wear Flow­ers in Your Hair)” and David Bowie’s “Star­man.” 1967 was the year of the Sum­mer of Love; by 1972, accord­ing to most reck­on­ings, the cul­tur­al era known as the Six­ties was, if not quite over, then at least clear­ly in its final days. The hip­pies were on their way down, and glam rock­ers had arisen to take their place with a vengeance.

In less than half an hour, the new video from Band­splain­ing tells the whole sto­ry of glam rock, “the gen­der-bend­ing pro­to-punk move­ment that was hat­ed by the press and crim­i­nal­ly under­played in the U.S.” It begins in the 1970s, a time when the mar­ket for long-play­ing records was robust, but sin­gles had fall­en behind as a youth-ori­ent­ed pop-cul­tur­al form.

Into that vac­u­um stepped T. Rex, a one­time avant-garde folk duo rein­vent­ed as a straight-ahead rock band bent on reviv­ing that genre as it row­di­ly was before the Bea­t­les came along. When they hit it big, oth­er acts imi­tat­ed not just their bluesy sound, but the androg­y­nous, brazen­ly fab­ri­ca­tion-for­ward image of front­man Marc Bolan. Prac­ti­cal­ly overnight, the name of the game changed from earnest self-expres­sion to out­landish self-cre­ation.

Oth­er bands reshaped by this glam rock move­ment, as it was soon dubbed in the British media, includ­ed Slade, The Sweet, and Mott the Hoople. “My broth­er’s back at home with his Bea­t­les and his Stones,” sang that last out­fit in their break­out hit. “We nev­er got it off on that rev­o­lu­tion stuff.” That song, “All the Young Dudes,” had been writ­ten by the sin­gle most defin­ing glam-rock fig­ure: David Bowie, who him­self shot to promi­nence in the thor­ough­ly anti-Six­ties guise of Zig­gy Star­dust, the bisex­u­al, syn­thet­ics-clad rock­er from out­er space who swag­gered as if already famous across the uni­verse. With­in a few years, Bowie’s anten­na for the zeit­geist would have him retir­ing Zig­gy Star­dust and ditch­ing glam rock, a genre whose flame burned as bril­liant­ly — and indeed gar­ish­ly — as it did briefly. But in pop music, its char­ac­ter­is­tic lack of sociopo­lit­i­cal ideals, obses­sion with fame, and casu­al rela­tion­ship with real­i­ty were here to stay.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Zig­gy Star­dust Turns 50: Cel­e­brate David Bowie’s Sig­na­ture Char­ac­ter with a New­ly Released Ver­sion of “Star­man”

Watch David Bowie Per­form “Star­man” on Top of the Pops: Vot­ed the Great­est Music Per­for­mance Ever on the BBC (1972)

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry of the Singer’s Jour­ney From Zanz­ibar to Star­dom

Meet the Char­ac­ters Immor­tal­ized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry Scene

The His­to­ry of Rock Told in a Whirl­wind 15-Minute Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Like dig­ging for fos­sils or pan­ning for gold, the research process can be a tedious affair. But for any researcher, long days of search­ing and read­ing will even­tu­al­ly result in dis­cov­ery. These are the moments schol­ars cher­ish. It’s the chance dis­cov­ery, how­ev­er rare, that makes the long hours and bleary late nights worth­while. And some finds can change an entire field. Such was the dis­cov­ery of St. John’s Col­lege PhD stu­dent, and now Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Musi­col­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pavia, Gio­van­ni Varel­li, who, in 2014, found what is believed to be, writes Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, “the ear­li­est known prac­ti­cal exam­ple of poly­phon­ic music,” that is, music con­sist­ing of two or more melod­ic lines work­ing togeth­er simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

You can hear the short composition—written in praise of the patron saint of Ger­many, Saint Boniface—performed above by St. John’s under­grad­u­ates Quintin Beer and John Clapham. Pri­or to Varelli’s dis­cov­ery of this piece of music, the ear­li­est poly­phon­ic music was thought to date to the year 1000, from a col­lec­tion called The Win­ches­ter Trop­er. Varelli’s dis­cov­ery may date to 100 years ear­li­er, around the year 900, and was found at the end of a man­u­script of the Life of Bish­op Mater­ni­anus of Reims. One rea­son musi­col­o­gists have so far over­looked the piece, Varel­li says, is that “we are not see­ing what we expect­ed.”

Typ­i­cal­ly, poly­phon­ic music is seen as hav­ing devel­oped from a set of fixed rules and almost mechan­i­cal prac­tice. This changes how we under­stand that devel­op­ment pre­cise­ly because who­ev­er wrote it was break­ing those rules. It shows that music at this time was in a state of flux and devel­op­ment.

Varelli’s spe­cial­iza­tion in ear­ly music nota­tion also pro­vid­ed him with the train­ing need­ed to rec­og­nize the piece, which was writ­ten using “an ear­ly form of nota­tion that pre­dates the inven­tion of the stave” (see the piece below). Accord­ing to for­mer British Library cura­tor Nico­las Bell, “when this man­u­script was first cat­a­logued in the 18th cen­tu­ry, nobody was able to under­stand these unusu­al sym­bols.” Varelli’s dis­cov­ery shows a devi­a­tion from “the con­ven­tion laid out in trea­tis­es at the time” and points toward the devel­op­ment of a musi­cal tech­nique that “defined most Euro­pean music up until the 20th cen­tu­ry.”

Varel­li gives us a sense of how impor­tant this dis­cov­ery is to schol­ars of ear­ly music: “the rules being applied here laid the foun­da­tions for those that devel­oped and gov­erned the major­i­ty of west­ern music his­to­ry for the next thou­sand years. This dis­cov­ery shows how they were evolv­ing, and how they exist­ed in a con­stant state of trans­for­ma­tion, around the year 900.”

So there you have it. If you’re stuck in the dol­drums of a research project, wait­ing for the wind to pick up, don’t despair. The next rare arti­fact, trea­tise, or man­u­script may be wait­ing for some­one with exact­ly your spe­cial­ized insights to deci­pher its secrets.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute—the World’s Old­est Playable Instrument—Get Played Again

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.