The fourty-second album: #42 The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
From this point on, we're going to see Beatles albums pop up quite regularly. This is still mostly the poppy sound, with the title track setting the tone for this. This time all written by the Beatles themselves, the quality and interest in their own material shows through. I Should Have Done Better shows more of the effects other musicians were having on the group, pushing their style in the direction of Bob Dylan, harmonica included. There's a lot more experimentation on the album in general, which really helps keeping it entertaining and showing the growth they're going through - as well as the additional freedom they were probably given.
Another thing that I believe is new to their albums are the bigger ballads. The more sensitive songs feel like they work better than a (to me) fairly standard poppy Tell Me Why. It can make for an odd tonal shift at times, but the softer, different things are where I feel the album really stands out. Even including something like Can't Buy Me Love, which contains the generic poppy base, but goes for a blues setup, creating an interesting mix to listen to. The biggest strength, here, is really that most of the songs are more experimental, which is where this becomes a great album for me.