Saturday Deluxe / 5 October 2024

Beatles reissue

In a rather unusual move, The Beatles 1964 album A Hard Day’s Night is being reissued on coloured vinyl for National Album Day.

I say unusual, because normally Apple Corps and Universal shun Fab Four coloured vinyl reissues and events such as Record Store Day and National Album Day – perhaps the thinking was such gimmicks are beneath them – but not any more, it seems. The thaw came last year with the coloured vinyl versions of both the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums along with the ‘Now and Then’ single, which they went to town with, in terms of coloured vinyl variants (three seven-inch singles and one 12-inch).

The A Hard Day’s Night re-release is justified because it’s the album’s 60th anniversary (which was actually back in July) and the record will be pressed on 180g white vinyl. For the first time in a long while, a Beatles reissue doesn’t feature audio newly remixed by Giles Martin. The press release makes so mention of the mastering so we can only presume it’s the 2009 stereo remaster.

Another interesting aspect to this reissue is that it is not available to pre-order anywhere. You can only buy it on National Album Day – on the 19th October – and after that date.

New single from Tears For Fears

Tears For Fears have released – let’s just say ‘made available’ –  the song Astronaut from their forthcoming album Songs For A Nervous Planet. It’s one of four studio tracks on what is of course primarily a live album. The song was written by Roland Orzabal and Charlton Pettus and features backing vocals by Lauren Evans. It was produced by the band and Charlton Pettus. Let us know what you think of ‘Astronaut’.

By the way, the pre-order window for the limited SDE-exclusive blu-ray of the album closed a while back, but if you are after a copy you can add yourself to the waiting list by visiting the product listing on the SDE shop and clicking the ‘tell me if you get more stock’ button (if you don’t see this button, please try an alternate browser). We’ll inevitably get some cancellations and so there will almost certainly be some availability, in a few weeks, when it’s released (on 25 October).

Sticking with Tears For Fears, don’t forget about the concert film Tears For Fears Live (A Tipping Point Film). It’s coming to cinemas worldwide on Thursday, Oct 24 and Saturday, Oct 26. For tickets and locations visit https://tearsforfearsfilm.com/. Below is a taster: Head Over Heels.