Arguably the most intimate look at the inner workings of the Beatles you’re ever likely to get" - Stereogum reviews the new 3-part Beatles documentary. SG adds: "Although the setting is not all that visually striking, the cinematography is gorgeous — and thanks to Jackson’s CGI restoration of the 16mm footage, the reality of it all almost feels heightened at times, like you’re watching actors playing these characters in a hyper-detailed period piece".

Disney+ has shared a great new trailer for 'Get Back', Peter Jackson’s new three-part documentary chronicling the making of The Beatles’ penultimate album, 1970’s 'Let It Be'. Jackson said it is a “story of friends and of individuals. It is the story of human frailties and of a divine partnership. It is a detailed account of the creative process, with the crafting of iconic songs under pressure, set amid the social climate of early 1969. But it’s not nostalgia – it’s raw, honest, and human". The documentary features – for the first time in its entirety – The Beatles’ last live performance as a group, the rooftop concert on London’s Savile Row on January 30th, 1969. It is set to premiere over Thanksgiving weekend (November 25th, 26th, and 27th).

Music YouTuber David Bennett released an interesting video describing 8 elements in music that are quite common now, and that were pioneered by the Beatles. They were the first to play concerts on a sports stadium, the first to play live music on TV, the first to introduce loops and guitar feedback, the first to use sitar in popular western music etc.

Rock N' Heavy goes into the lyrics of "them good boys" The Beatles, who were, well, not that good all the time. Even in their early songs, like 'Please Please Me' with a direct suggestion of oral sex:

"Last night I said these words to my girl
I know you never even try, girl
C’mon (C’mon), please please me oh yeah, like I please you".

The trailer for the six-part documentary series 'McCartney 3, 2, 1', featuring Paul McCartney and Rick Rubin has been released. It shows big-shot producer and big-shot bassist dissecting Beatles classics like 'Come Together', 'All My Loving', 'With a Little Help From My Friends', and 'In My Life'.

Peter Jackson has expanded his upcoming Beatles documentary from a standalone film to a mini-series composed of three two-hour installments, Vanity Fair reports. 'The Beatles: Get Back' chronicles the making of The Beatles’ penultimate album, 1970’s 'Let It Be', whereas part of the reason for its expansion was due to the insistence of Jackson, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr to have the full rooftop concert on London’s Savile Row - the final performance of the band’s career - shown in full. 'The Beatles: Get Back' will air over Thanksgiving weekend.

Director Peter Jackson has shared a preview of his forthcoming documentary 'The Beatles: Get Back' which aims to “take audiences back in time to The Beatles’ intimate recording sessions during a pivotal moment in music history”, NME reports. Jackson said he wanted to showcase “the vibe and energy” of the film with the preview. It will be out in August 2021, probably.

Craig Brown has won the Baillie Gifford prize, top British award for nonfiction, for his book 'One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time', a mix of history, diaries, autobiography, fan letters, interviews, lists and charts, Daily Mail reports. BG judges say it is “a joyous, irreverent, insightful celebration of the Beatles, a highly original take on familiar territory... a profound book about success and failure which won the unanimous support of our judges. Craig Brown has reinvented the art of biography”.

The Beatles were falling apart as they were making their latest album 'Let It Be', and the new book 'The Beatles: Get Back' is going to tell the story of those last days, Guardian reports. It is drawn from over 120 hours of transcribed conversations from the band’s studio sessions. The book will be accompanied by Peter Jackson’s feature documentary of the same name. Both are coming out in August 2021. In related Beatles news, Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman has released a documentary 'Meeting The Beatles in India' about how he met the fab four at an ashram on the Ganges. Narrated by Morgan Freeman and produced by David Lynch, the film, among other things, contains rare images of the band taken by Saltzman. They are wistful vignettes of the rock stars in their prime, unguarded and relaxed, BBC reports.

Journalist Ken McNab goes into the nitty-gritty details of the last year of the Beatles in his book 'And in the End: The Last Days of the Beatles'. As it turns out it was - money, and the fifth Beatle. "The idea that they'd set up their own company called Apple and run it themselves, smacks of incredible naivete... They were not equipped and didn't have the skills to be business managers" - McNab tells in an All Music interview about the beginning of the end The other reason was manager Allen Klein, "the demon king... who created this terrible schism between Lennon and McCartney". The other Beatles didn't really like Yoko Ono - "McCartney had to deal with tiptoeing around this relationship with John and Yoko... Harrison walked out on the band (...) Much of the reason for that was because he couldn't stand Yoko being in the studio, and her presence stymied John's creativity and made him very passive when it came to group decisions". Finally, Lennon got into a row with McCartney when he found out the bassist has been buying Beatles' shares, ignoring the gentlemen's agreement that all the four members will keep equal parts. But, there's a lot of light in the book - "When you get to 'Abbey Road', it's amazing how they were able to put down the boxing gloves and reunite for one last album, their last letter to the world".

"I like [going on buses]. I find it very grounding... I also like a nice car and I like driving too. But there’s something about that, being ordinary... I mean, I know I can’t be ordinary, at all – I’m way too famous to be ordinary – but, for me, that feeling inside, of feeling like myself still, is very important" - Paul McCartney says in a great interview for the GQ. He also talks about building and then breaking up the Beatles, suing the band for their own sake, being in lockdown, working with Rihanna and Kanye West... A great read.

"The Beatles began their career emulating and covering their classic rock’n’roll heroes but quickly set about exploring all the possibilities of sound, technology, broad-reaching historical revivalism and mad drug music that success made available to them. As a direct result, they invented pretty much every modern pop genre from EDM to metal and might’ve got the full house if they’d ever let Ringo rap... The Stones, on the other hand... popularised blues rock and, um, that’s it" - Mark, My Words argues in his latest column, wrote after Paul McCartney told Howard Stern his band was better. The other reason NME's blogger wrote about it - there aren't any good feuds anymore.

Paul McCartney's handwritten lyrics for The Beatles' song 'Hey Jude' have sold at auction for £731,000 ($910,000), almost six times more than the £128,000 estimate, Independent reports. Three hundred items were on offer at Julien’s Auctions to mark the 50th anniversary of the band's split, and McCartney’s note was the biggest seller. Sir Paul wrote 'Hey Jude' to console the young Julian Lennon after the divorce of the boy's parents John and Cynthia, but changed the name to Jude because it sounded "a bit more country and western for me". A bass drumhead used in the opening concert of the Beatles' first North American tour fetched £161,000 ($200,000) at the same auction, four times its estimate. John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "BAGISM" drawing, featured in the couple's 1969 'Bed In Peace' documentary as part of their protest against the Vietnam War, sold for £75,000 ($93,750).

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Paul McCartney's saying goodbye to the Beatles, NME's Mark Beaumont made a list of 20 best songs from the fab four's solo careers. Number 1? Not the one we'd expected - "a perfect crystallisation of the psychedelic hypno-state" of the '#9 Dream' by John Lennon.

The world-famous Abbey Road zebra crossing has been repainted while the streets of London are empty because of the quarantine set forth due to coronavirus pandemic, Insider reports. The zebra made famous by the Beatles was quietly repainted on 24 March by a highways maintenance crew, the day after the UK prime minister ordered Britain to go on lockdown. The government designated the crossing a site of national importance in 2010, which means the crossing can be altered only with the approval of local authorities. Abbey Road Studios, just down the road from the iconic zebra, closed their doors for the first time in their 89-year history earlier this week to limit the spread of COVID-19.

16 years ago - in a more innocent, less litigious, and more freewheeling time - Danger Mouse made a sensation with his 'Grey Album' that combined music from The Beatles' 'White Album' and Jay-Z's vocals from his 'Black Album'. Rolling Stones is wondering would we get to hear such an experiment now? The answer is - probably not! Far more so than in the post-Napster days of 2004, the music business is on edge about copyright infringement. If anyone had the notion of creating something akin to 'The Grey Album now', those thoughts would be quickly extinguished, considered not worth the risk and cost.

The best selling vinyl album in the 2010s in the USA was 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles, selling in 558,000 copies. In fact, all the biggest vinyl albums of the past 10 years are older performers like Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Miles Davis... Only two albums actually released in the 2010s appear on the list: the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' soundtrack - which is entirely comprised of songs released in the ’60s and ’70s, and Lana Del Rey’s 'Born to Die'. The only album from the noughties on the list is Amy Winehouse's 'Back to Black'. No album from the 1990s on the list.

A record number of 973,000 vinyl LPs was sold in the USA in week ending Dec. 19, marking the single biggest week for vinyl album sales since Nielsen Music began electronically tracking music sales in 1991. Vinyl album sales were so hot in the week ending Dec. 19, they comprised 25% of all albums sold […]

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany analysed 80,000 different chord progressions from 745 songs, using machine learning to give a score to each chord based on how “surprising” it was compared to the chord preceding it, Newsweek reports. Chord sequences were then played to 39 volunteers, stripped of lyrics and melody to make […]

The 50th anniversary edition of the Beatles' 'Abbey Road' returns to the UK album chart at No. 1, breaking Beatles' own longevity record. 'Abbey Road' has the longest-ever span between runs at the summit, at 49 years and 252 days since its original 17-week at No. 1 ended on Jan. 31, 1970. The Beatles held the […]

Award-winning writer/director team of Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle made a new movie 'Yesterday', with an interesting catch - nobody knows anything about the Beatles. The movie premiered on Tuesday, it stars former EastEnders actor Himesh Patel as a struggling singer-songwriter, as his character Jack Malik wakes up after an accident caused by a global […]

A John Lennon-owned copy of the Beatles’ infamous “butcher cover” version of 'Yesterday and Today', sold for $234,000 at a Beatles-themed auction this week. The vinyl copy – autographed by Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr - and featuring a back cover sketch drawn by Lennon is the third highest price paid for a vinyl. Highest price […]

Last year there were 16.8 million vinyl albums sold in USA, up 14.6 percent from 2017., marking the 13th consecutive year of growth for the format. 16.8 million is also a new yearly high for vinyl album sales since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991. Ten biggest selling vinyls were 'Guardians of the Galaxy' […]

Drake's single 'Nice For What' returned to #1 on the Hot 100 chart, and his 'Yes Indeed' collaboration with Lil Baby came 6th, which earned him the distinction of passing Elvis Presley on an exclusive list - it's Drake's 26th Top 10 entry, one more than Elvis. Madonna maintains the #1 position with 38 Top 10s, […]