Wow! I am thorougly impressed with how much better "Let It Be...Naked" is than the original "Let It Be" album.

The original album has never been one of my favorite Beatles albums. I have always liked the live sound that they were going for, but I don't think that the original album achieved that sound at all. As soon as "Let It Be" fell into the hands of Phil Spector, it went from a live sounding feel, to an overproduced piece of fluff. The original was, for lack of a better word, a sloppily produced album. It never felt cohesive to me.

The newer version sounds like the album that the Beatles originally intended to make. In one word, the new album is LEAN. Gone is the fluff and over orchestrated mess that Phil Spector added to some of the songs. Gone is the inbetween banter that John Lennon (and not the actual Beatles as a group) added in after the band had gone their separate ways, and gone are "Maggie Mae" and "Dig It." I'm not quite sure why those songs were left off, but the addition of "Don't Let Me Down" more than makes up for those songs in my book.

Most songs haven't gone through any kind of radical change from the original cut. As a matter of fact, those without a highly in-tuned musical ear might not even be able to discern a change at all. But there are definitely some substantial changes to 3 songs that even the most oblivious Beatles fan should catch.

"Across the Universe," "The Long and Winding Road," and "Let It Be" are just lean. Lean as hell. I cannot stress how much improved these versions are over the Phil Spector versions. "Across the Universe" ditched the cheesy background noises and voices, and is more or less just John and his guitar. While still a schmalty song, "The Long and Winding Road" is a lot easier to take now that it is stripped of the bad orchestration and background choir voices. "Let It Be" was stripped of it's background orchestrations, and the only background voices that remain are those of the Beatles themselves and Billy Preston's organ. This disc is worth the purchase if for nothing other than these three HIGHLY improved songs.

I've been reading some reviews for this disc on Amazon, and I honestly feel that some people have misperceptions of what this album trully is. Some people feel that this is nothing more than Paul going in after George and John have passed and tampering with the Beatles lasting legacy. The say things that Paul could only do this after George passed away, when in fact George Harrison was greatly looking forward to hearing a more stripped down version of the "Let It Be" album. George Harrison (who used Phil Spector as a producer through his early albums) sometimes laments the fact that his songs were "overproduced" and wishes that some of his songs on "All Things Must Pass" could be stripped of their big "wall of sound" that Phil Spector included. I think that George of all people would have greatly enjoyed this more stripped down version of the "Let It Be" album.

And as for John, I think that a lot of went wrong with the original "Let It Be" album sprung from John Lennon's disallusionment of the Beatles, mixed with his raging Heroin addiction. Two of those factors led John to somewhat go behind the back of the other Beatles to put out the original "Let It Be" album as HE saw it, instead of the way that the band intended to make the album. What they originally intended to be a live album of new songs, turned out to be an overproduced album of songs that existed in the in-between world of "live" and "overproduced."

But that's just my personal opinion obviously. Some people will prefer the original album and that's fine. We've all grown up with the original, so even a hard core Beatles fan such as myself can sometimes find it disjarring to hear any of their albums tampered with. But as I see it, a Beatles fan shouldn't choose to buy one or the the other. And I don't think that's the surviving Beatles' intention. I think that they feel that these two albums can be great companion pieces.

matt out