Yellow Submarine

Yellow Submarine, the Beatles' tenth studio album, was released by Apple Records in the UK on January 13, 1969, just two months after the release of The White Album. Most of the recording for the project was accomplished much earlier, between May 12, 1967 and February 11, 1968. , Yellow Submarine, the film, had been produced in 1968, and the album was essentially a soundtrack album, including orchestral pieces composed, arranged and recorded by George Martin for the project. The instrumentals are on side two.

The six original Beatles' songs on side one include Yellow Submarine, which also had been issued as a single and on the Revolver album. All You Need Is Love had been released as a single 18 months earlier and on the US LP of Magical Mystery Tour. The other four songs were not previously released. Two were made for the film (All Together Now and Hey Bulldog). Harrison's criticism of the music publishing business, Only a Northern Song, had been finished in the Sgt. Pepper project but shelved. It's All Too Much also had been put in final form earlier, without being earmarked for any specific project.

Baby, You're a Rich Man was a song that appeared in the film, but was not put on Yellow Submarine because it had come out as the b-side to All You Need Is Love as a single release. Hey Bulldog was conceived to be in a short promotional film for the Lady Madonna single, but was then diverted to the film and this album project. In all, sixteen songs were included in the film, but only six made it onto the record. The remaining nine could be found on other albums, though the performances in the film sometimes varied from the original versions.

By the time Yellow Submarine was prepared, the Beatles had been focused exclusively on studio album projects, having given up touring in order to devote full time to composition and recording. Each of their more recent studio albums was planned and executed within a specific block of time. Because this was definitely not the case with Yellow Submarine, the group was less involved with its production and less enthusiastic about the result. The four previously unreleased songs were essentially taken from inventory, and all of side two was taken up with material in which they had little involvement.

This album should not be confused with the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, a 1999 remaster of the film soundtrack that added nine songs not heard on the original release, and omitting the George Martin instrumentals.