Granted, we're talking about a time when the Beatles were making some of the finest pop albums of all time, so the question of what constitutes 'good enough' is relative. They never found release during the time they were recorded because, well, they weren't good enough. The other four were holdovers from sessions in 1967 (Paul McCartney's 'All Together Now', George Harrison's 'It's All Too Much' and 'It's Only a Northern Song') and 1968 (John Lennon's 'Hey Bulldog'). Of the six tracks by the Beatles on the album's first side, two, 'Yellow Submarine' and 'All You Need Is Love', are already familiar from their original contexts (as part of Revolver and as a single, respectively). So actors mimicked their voices, their input into the story consisted of a meeting or two with the filmmakers, and when it came time to assemble the soundtrack, they combed through the vault to see what was left over. Brian Epstein had died in August, and with him gone, there was little motivation for the Beatles to participate in any meaningful way. And while the record releases associated with Magical Mystery Tour are of staggeringly high quality, the Yellow Submarine soundtrack is like the work of a supremely talented band that couldn't really be bothered.

While the latter film was derided as pretentious and incoherent, the Yellow Submarine feature was well-received. In one sense, the Yellow Submarine project is the opposite of Magical Mystery Tour.

Yellow submarine song beatles genre