169: LET IT BE | THE REPLACEMENTS
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 well received 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 241 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album was remastered and reissued in 2008, with six additional tracks.
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." Read more