Acclaimed Music Forums

Abbey Road received mixed reviews from contemporary music critics, who criticised the production's artificial sounds and viewed its music as inauthentic. William Mann of the London Times said that the album will "be called gimmicky by people by who want a record to sound exactly like a live performance." Ed Ward of Rolling Stone called it "complicated instead of complex" and felt that the Moog synthesizer "disembodies and artificializes" the band's sound, adding that they "create a sound that could not possibly exist outside the studio." Although he found the medley on side two to be their "most impressive music" since Rubber Soul, Nik Cohn of The New York Times said that, "individually", the album's songs are "nothing special". Albert Goldman of Life magazine wrote that Abbey Road "is not one of the Beatles' great albums" and, despite some "lovely" phrases and "stirring" segues, side two's suite "seems symbolic of the Beatles' latest phase, which might be described as the round-the-clock production of disposable music effects."

In a more enthusiastic review, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice said that the album "captivates me as might be expected" and found it "flawed but fine". John Mendelsohn, writing for Rolling Stone, called it "breathtakingly recorded" and praised side two especially, equating it to "the whole of Sgt. Pepper" and stating, "That the Beatles can unify seemingly countless musical fragments and lyrical doodlings into a uniformly wonderful suite ... seems potent testimony that no, they've far from lost it, and no, they haven't stopped trying."

Interesting, though not uncommon. Many classics of not just music but literature and cinema weren't exactly critical darlings at first. Wrong forum section though. This should be under general music, not lists.