10 Perfect Rock Albums For Pop Fans

After spending most of the early '60s being shuffled from one show to the next, it would be understandable for the Beatles to feel pretty burnt by the time they decided to quit the road in 1966. Since the last few years had been spent avoiding the millions of fans trying to maul them whenever they took to the stage, they were starting to grow tired of the perception of them the public eye, trying their best to shake off their moptop persona in whatever way they could. The same year that they left the road for good though, Revolver gave us a good indication of where they were going next.

If Rubber Soul was the band's folk rock statement, this is where everything got blown wide open, with every single song being looked at as a different experimental undertaking by the group. Across 14 tracks, every band member seems to toy with what can be done with the two minute pop song, from John Lennon's hazy sounds on I'm Only Sleeping to Paul McCartney bringing in classical instrumentation on his ballads like Eleanor Rigby and For No One.

This is also the first time where George Harrison fully flourished as a songwriter, taking the sounds of Indian music and working them into songs like Love You To and Taxman. By the time you get to the wild finale on Tomorrow Never Knows, you knew that the boy band phase of the Beatles was long gone. They had jumped into the experimental pool, and pop was never going to be the same again.