Don't get me wrong. I'm a Beatle nut and I love everything they did, but A Hard Day's Night is a fine collection of pop songs. Help! is the stirrings of something newer and more interesting: from the bouncy introspection of the opener through the fantastic vocal harmonies of 'You're Going To Lose That Girl' and the Beatle cover that best suited Ringo's lugubrious charm, 'Act Naturally'.        

Some of the songs are indeed throw-aways in terms of their composition but there isn't a track here that hasn't been sprinkled with the Abbey Road magic dust.  

Entertainment Weekly also has a top 100, and comparison is supposed to be illuminating so let's fire the debate a bit more with a look at their top of the cinematic pops - which seems to be more predicated on the soundtrack as accompaniment to image rather than as an album in its own right:

1. A Hard Day's Night 
2. The Sound of Music
3. Saturday Night Fever
4. West Side Story
5. The Wizard of Oz
6. Superfly
7. The Graduate
8. The Godfather
9. Purple Rain
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Ahaaa, musicals! Forgotten all about those hadn't you? A whole new world of dispute - where's On The Town?  

I can't recall the last time I had to run out of a cinema and grab a disc of what I'd just heard and seen.

The soundtrack to Clerks is a darn fine collection and I hope that was on the list of picks. I once picked up an excellent collection called Day Tripper that was the soundtrack to a snowboarding film I have never and will never watch. But without that album I would have never heard the stomping "Lowest of the Low" by Stamford Prison Experiment, and for that my life would have been poorer.  

Beatle fans riled by the Purple one's pre-eminence can take comfort from Amazon's current number one best seller is The Beatles' covers set currently accompanying Fabs' fantasy Across The Universe.