everyone has a favorite beatles album.  help is not mine.  picking a favorite would be like picking a favorite kid.  you can’t.  i had an extremely lucky thing happen to me in 8th grade.  my father had been to see a friend in the music business and he gave him a box of cds.  it just so happened the beatles black box was in there – which included all the beatles studio albums including past masters vol 1 and 2.  i was in heaven.  the only two albums i owned at this point were rubber soul and sgt. peppers.  i’ll admit it was a bit overwhelming at first.  i started listening to everything post rubber soul and familiarized myself with the trippy beatles.  i ignored the first 5 albums, because they seemed too safe.  later in high school, i got a copy of some acoustic guitar magazine that had the chords to “you’ve got to hide your love away” in it.  i pulled out help and listened to the song.  how had i not heard this before?  it didn’t sound like the early beatles.  it sounded like something dylan would write.  i explored the rest of the album.  you could tell they were maturing – reaching for something bigger than what they had done on previous records.  their early sound remained true on “ticket to ride”, “another girl” and the covers “dizzy miss lizzy” and ” act naturally,” but the songwriting was going elsewhere.  some might argue that “yesterday” is the best song the beatles ever wrote.  it’s definitely one of my favorites, but the two songs on help that define that record for me are “tell me what you see” and the mixed tape go-to “i’ve just seen a face.”  in my opinion no one has ever captured that love-at-first-sight moment better than “i’ve just seen a face” and no one ever will.  you just can’t compete with the beatles.