Let It Be (1984)

Let It Be is the third studio album by American rock band the Replacements. It was released on October 2, 1984, by Twin/Tone Records. A post-punk album with coming-of-age themes, Let It Be was recorded by the band after they had grown tired of playing loud and fast exclusively as on their 1983 Hootenanny album; the group decided to write songs that were, according to vocalist Paul Westerberg, "a little more sincere."

Let It Be was acclaimed by music critics and later ranked among the greatest albums of the 1980s by AllMusic and Rolling Stone magazine. Now considered a classic, Let It Be is frequently included on professional lists of the all-time best rock albums, being ranked number 156 on Rolling Stone's 2023 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album was remastered and reissued in 2008, with six additional tracks and liner notes by Peter Jesperson.

Background

The Replacements started their career as a punk rock band but had gradually grown beyond the straightforward hardcore of initial albums like Stink. Westerberg recalls that "playing that kind of noisy, fake hardcore rock was getting us nowhere, and it wasn't a lot of fun. This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles." By 1983, the band would sometimes perform a set of cover songs intended to antagonize whoever was in the audience. Westerberg explained that the punks who made up their audience "thought that's what they were supposed to be standing for, like 'Anybody does what they want' and 'There are no rules' [...] But there were rules and you couldn't do that, and you had to be fast, and you had to wear black, and you couldn't wear a plaid shirt with flares ... So we'd play the DeFranco Family, that kind of shit, just to piss 'em off."

Peter Buck of R.E.M. was originally rumored to produce the album. Buck later confirmed that the band did consider him as a possible producer, but when they met Buck in Athens, Georgia, the band did not have enough material. Buck did manage to contribute to the album in a limited capacity; he said, "I was kind of there for pre-production stuff, did one solo, gave 'em some ideas."

Music and lyrics

Westerberg's lyrics feature themes of self-consciousness and rejection as felt by awkward youths, and deal with topics such as generational discontent on "Unsatisfied", uncontrollable arousal on "Gary's Got a Boner", and callow sexuality on "Sixteen Blue". According to music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the album's coming-of-age theme is aligned between adolescence and adulthood, and unlike many other adolescent-themed post-punk records, Let It Be remains less on the subject of angst and incorporates humor and more varied music.

Packaging and title

The cover of Let It Be is a photograph of the band sitting on the roof of Bob and Tommy Stinson's mother's house taken by Daniel Corrigan. Michael Azerrad stated that the cover was a "great little piece of mythmaking," showcasing each band member's personality via how they appear in the photograph. (As of 2019, the current owners of the house had added a stained-glass window reproducing the album-cover photograph.) The album's title is a reference to the 1970 album Let It Be by the Beatles; Westerberg recalled:

We were going to call it Whistler's Mammy, and then we were going to call it Stunk. And then we decided that the next song that came on the radio was going to be the album title. The next thing you know, "When I find myself in times of trouble..." comes on the radio.

The reference was partially intended as a joke on the Replacements' manager, Peter Jesperson, who was a huge Beatles fan. Westerberg has stated the name was "our way of saying that nothing is sacred, that the Beatles were just a fine rock & roll band. We were seriously gonna call the next record Let It Bleed."

Critical reception

Reviewing for The Village Voice in 1984, music critic Robert Christgau said that the band has matured by incorporating melody in their music and felt that they succeed by writing about their likes and dislikes rather than adhering to garage rock principles. Debby Miller of Rolling Stone magazine called it a "brilliant rock & roll album" and wrote that, instead of the rugged, up-tempo rock of the band's first two albums, Let It Be has "an amazing range" of musical ideas. Bruce Pavitt, writing in The Rocket, called the album "mature, diverse rock that could well shoot these regional boys into the national mainstream." Let It Be was voted the fourth best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1984. Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it second best on his own list, and in a decade-end list for the newspaper, named it the tenth best album of the 1980s. He later said that, along with X's 1981 album Wild Gift, Let It Be represented the peak of American indie rock.