Help! by The Beatles

Help! hit the shops on 6 August 1965 on Parlophone, the Beatles' fifth album and the soundtrack to their film of the same name, and it catches the band with one foot in Beatlemania and the other stepping somewhere new. Side one is the movie: seven songs, the singles "Help!" and "Ticket to Ride" among them. Side two is where it gets interesting. With George Martin producing at Abbey Road, the group kept pushing the studio's multitrack machines, stacking sound on sound; "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" brings in flutes, and "Yesterday" wraps a string quartet around the tune, the band's first brush with the Baroque and, in time, the most covered song ever written.

It went to number one in Britain, America, Germany and Australia, and in the States it was the record that got serious critics comparing the Beatles to European art music. It also made them the first rock band ever nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.