Here's a quick guide to the best solo album from each ex-Beatle that can be found on iTunes. Grab your iPod and stock up.
1. John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
There's a reasonable argument to be made for which Beatle had the best work as part of the group, though ultimately the answer is probably that the group made the best work, period. However, there is little dispute that John Lennon had the best solo albums after the Beatles split up, Yoko Ono notwithstanding.
Plastic Ono Band was the introspective songwriter's brutal, honest look at himself and the people around him, with a scathing attack on Paul (the venomous "How Do You Sleep"), the heartbreaking "Mother," and the hopeful "Imagine." John Lennon is unfairly looked on as the most negative of the Beatles--which by all accounts he was, but not musically. He was simply honest about the way he felt and how he thought things should be, and no musician has ever had a harder critic in himself than John Lennon.
Equally fantastic albums are Mind Games (deeply political in nature) and Walls and Bridges, notable for a duet with Elton John ("Whatever Gets You Through the Night") and Harry Nilsson ("Old Dirt Road"), the former of which caused Lennon to lose a bet with Elton once the single cracked the top ten. Interesting bit of trivia: Lennon and McCartney jammed together again during the sessions for Walls and Bridges, and though nothing good came out of the sessions, it's a welcome hint that things had healed between Lennon and McCartney after the Beatles' angry breakup.
2. Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation
It took Paul a few decades before he reached his solo creative capacity, probably because he didn't have his dynamic relationship with John Lennon to add an edge to his songs and push him to innovate. He got the criticism he needed to step up his songwriting from former Radiohead producer Nigel Goderich, and though McCartney himself has referred to the studio sessions as strained and difficult, the result is his best album. Paul mixes the dark with the lighthearted and clever production tricks mean that the songs stay vivid long after they've stopped playing. His follow-up, 2007's Memory Almost Full, is also strong, showing the world that there's plenty of genius left in Paul McCartney.
3. George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
Paul and John teated George Harrison as though he were not a talented songwriter during his time with the Beatles, so he appropriately proved them wrong with the two disc "All Things Must Pass," made up of songs he'd written before and immediately after the Beatles were over. There's not a lot of weak moments on these disks, even if you exclude the brilliant "My Sweet Lord" due to plagiarism (you'd be robbing yourself if you did). There's a Dylan cover ("If Not For You"), ruminations on life, love, and rock and roll, and all of the exquisite sweetness you'd expect out of the man who wrote "Something." A more faultless album may not exist.
The follow-up, "Living in the Material World," is also a great album, though the religious overtones can get overbearing for those not used to listening to solo Harrison.
4. Ringo Starr - Ringo Starr And His All Starr Band
The most unfairly derided Beatle is probably Ringo, whose talents don't as much lay in the art of songwriting as much as the way he reshaped rock and roll drumming and added a cheeky sense of humor to the Fab Four. Ringo never took himself too seriously, a feat which no other Beatle can claim, and as a result he has yielded some of the purest (if not the best-written) music in the time since the Beatles split apart.
For a solo album, you can't do better than Ringo live with his band in this 1990 release, where the energy isn't obscured by studio production and Starsky's rough-but-sweet voice can ring out. There are scattered moments of greatness across his solo albums, such as his tribute to the fallen George Harrison and the golden pop melody of the #1 hit Photograph, but his live work makes his influence and legacy as part of the Beatles clear. Ringo also plays drums on the several Harry Nilsson albums on iTunes and can be heard across all of the solo Beatles' recordings at one point or another.
Finding the Beatles on ITunes: A Guide to the Greatest Solo Albums from the Fab Four
