With all due respect to the Beatles, this is a real throwaway album. The popularity of Yellow Submarine (both the album and the movie) have always been a mystery to me, even though I adored the song as a kid. The film, which the Beatles had nearly zero involvement in, was sort of an aimless children's cartoon movie. All of the music was previously released except for four songs. Of those four, only "All Together Now" has a childlike spirit. The others were largely "homeless" songs that never found their way on to an album or single, and at one point were supposed to be part of an EP that was never released.
Except for the George Martin "score" songs (the last seven that sound like classical music), all of the songs here have been re-homed. "Yellow Submarine" is and always has been a track off the classic Revolver album from 1966. "It's Only a Northern Song" (a Sgt. Pepper era outtake), "All Together Now", "Hey Bulldog", and "It's All Too Much" ended up in mono form on the Mono Masters collection (primarily to sub in for the Past Masters material that had no mono equivalent), and "All You Need Is Love" is the closing track of Magical Mystery Tour. All of the songs, plus a bunch more previously released numbers, appear in stereo on the score-less Yellow Submarine Songtrack, which has the strange distinction of being the first Beatles "remaster", although they are also remixed a little, which may irritate the purist.
In the great Beatles remastering of 2009, this album, in original form with the seven score tracks, was still upheld as a canon release, which is appropriate. However "appropriate" and "great" should not be confused in this particular situation.
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