{"id":723415,"date":"2026-08-01T21:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T21:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/723415\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T21:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T21:37:08","slug":"saturday-deluxe-thoughts-on-the-rubber-soul-reissue-superdeluxeedition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/723415\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Deluxe: Thoughts on the Rubber Soul reissue \u2013 SuperDeluxeEdition"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week saw the announcement of a Rubber Soul box set. It has been almost four years since Apple Corps launched a super deluxe edition of a Beatles<\/a> studio album. The last time was September 2022 with Revolver (when the 5CD super deluxe edition received a lowly 1.9 \/ 5 rating by SDE readers). To put this in perspective, Sgt. Pepper, \u2018The White Album\u2019, Abbey Road and Let It Be were all released in a four year period (between 2017 and 2021) so to only have had one box set in the following four year period suggests that Apple\u2019s priorities have been shifting somewhat.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that nothing has been happening, rather the project choices have been, at times, odd. The \u2018Now and Then\u2019 single of 2023 ended up leading to a massive \u2018Red\u2019 and \u2018Blue\u2019 album reissue campaign and created lots of work for Giles Martin and his team in terms of new 2023 stereo and Atmos mixes.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Apple felt obliged to celebrate the \u2018US Albums\u2019 and then last year we had Anthology 4 and the Anthology Collection (reviewed on SDE<\/a>) created to mark the fact that the original series was going to Disney+. <\/p>\n

There was nothing inherently wrong with any of this, but the US Albums campaign felt like retreading old ground (they\u2019d done it a decade earlier) and Apple rather annoyed fans by initially announcing that the only way to get Anthology 4 would be to buy Anthologies 1, 2 & 3 all over again (albeit remastered) in an Anthology Collection box set. They later U-turned on this strategy. <\/p>\n

Alongside announcements about 3 Savile Row<\/a> and various film projects, it has, at times, felt like the thing the Fab Four are most famous for \u2013 their music, and specifically the amazing run of studio albums between 1963 and 1970 \u2013 was no longer a priority, with wider cultural \u2018legacy\u2019 projects rising to the top. So, at push, we could call Rubber Soul a \u2018back to basics\u2019 type reissue campaign, but does it deliver what fans want?<\/p>\n

Both vinyl and CD box sets, unsurprisingly, offer new stereo mixes of the album by Giles Martin and Sam Okell. This is fairly much par for the course these days, and every other format uses this mix as the \u2018main\u2019 mix for the album. But what of the two other stereo remixes? The original 1965 stereo mix (which by stealth appeared in The Beatles in Mono CD box) and George Martin\u2019s 1987 stereo remix (which was remastered and reissued on CD and vinyl in 2009) are nowhere to be found on any format. No one is saying that we necessarily need these on separate CDs or vinyl LPs in the big box sets, but surely there was a place for them on the blu-ray edition, with its enormous capacity for audio and video? (more on that format, shortly). In 2021, when I asked Giles Martin if Let It Be actually needed a stereo remix [full interview here<\/a>] his answer was \u201cDoes it need remixing? Erm\u2026 it\u2019s not for me to say, really; I just get asked to do it\u201d.<\/p>\n

The charge of \u2018erasing history\u2019 by superseding original mixes of The Beatles\u2019 albums with new mixes is normally batted away with a defensive \u201cthe originals are still available\u201d, but is that actually the case and how easy is it for the average punter to even tell the difference between old and new product? If you search for \u2018Revolver\u2019 on Amazon in the UK<\/a> the first five listings are versions of the 2022 reissue, all of which use the 2022 new stereo remix as the \u2018main\u2019 version of the album, and the single CD edition is around \u00a313. Fifth in the search results is a CD copy of the 2009 remaster (with the 1987 stereo mix), which is only available via a third-party seller and costs \u00a325. There\u2019s nothing in the blurb to make it clear that you are getting the older mix, so a casual fan looking for a copy of Revolver on CD will almost certainly buy the \u00a313 listing and perhaps not understand the distinction between the two versions. It\u2019s a similar story with vinyl. The new stereo mix is very good in my opinion, but that\u2019s not the point.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always this feeling with new Beatles product that they want you to forget about what has come before. If you recall, two songs from Rubber Soul (\u2018Think For Yourself\u2019 and \u2018Nowhere Man\u2019) were completely remixed in stereo for the 1999 Yellow Submarine \u2018Songtrack\u2019 release. These were stunning at the time and while I\u2019m sure Giles Martin would argue that both are now redundant due to advances in technology (particularly \u2018de-mixing\u2019) would it have killed Apple to have included them somewhere in this reissue, as a nod to the history of the audio evolution of tracks from Rubber Soul?<\/p>\n

On a more positive note, the original mono mix of Rubber Soul is included in both the 4CD and 5LP box sets, but again not on the blu-ray, which we should probably talk about. First off, it\u2019s great news that after the bemusing disappointment of no physical blu-ray in Revolver (or for that matter the \u2018Red\u2019 and \u2018Blue\u2019 albums) the format returns for Rubber Soul. Reading the comments on SDE during this week<\/a>, there\u2019s some debate around whether it\u2019s a good or bad thing that it\u2019s standalone and not part of the box set but personally I welcome this. The box sets are already quite expensive, so including a blu-ray in them would just make it even more pricey and, let\u2019s be honest, there will be plenty of fans who want the vinyl or CD boxes but are not interested in immersive audio. Also, even when blu-rays were included in the big boxes, they were only ever in the CD super deluxe not the vinyl one. That issue is side-stepped by making it a standalone product.<\/p>\n

In terms of the blu-ray content, while it\u2019s a great format and still well worth buying<\/a>, you have to say it\u2019s a little bit disappointing. There\u2019s no 5.1 mix which is crazy, because they are relatively easy to create from an existing Atmos Mix, albeit I imagine nothing is \u2018easy\u2019 in the world of approvals with the surviving Beatles and John and George\u2019s Estates. More annoying is the lack of mono mix of Rubber Soul. That really should have been included alongside mono mixes of what they are calling \u2018The Single\u2019, which means the songs from the double A-side: \u2018We Can Work It Out\u2019 and \u2018Day Tripper\u2019. The past is ignored, so on the blu-ray, the album and the single only exist in mixes created in the last three years.<\/p>\n

I imagine that internally, the thought process was that offering too much (It\u2019s All Too Much?) content on the blu-ray for a \u00a329.99 price point would threaten sales of the big boxes which have a higher price tag (circa \u00a3135 and \u00a3200 for CD and vinyl sets). Apple are in the business of trying to make money, after all. But both boxes already have 26 tracks of sessions\/demos\/outtakes not on the blu-ray, so I\u2019m not convinced. And let\u2019s throw in the fact that the 2CD set \u2013\u00a0which is even cheaper than the blu-ray \u2013\u00a0offers 14 of those sessions\/demos\/outtakes denied to blu-ray buyers. There\u2019s a strong argument to be made that the blu-ray should have included the 14 tracks from the 2CD as bonus content. And, as stated earlier, the blu-ray would have made a great home to both the original 1965 stereo mix and the 1987 remix, for archival purposes, so it\u2019s sad that\u2019s not happening. The videos of \u2018We Can Work It Out\u2019 and \u2018Day Tripper\u2019 are, of course, very welcome.<\/p>\n

The final comment is that, until recently, Apple were always relatively restrained with single LP vinyl formats when it came to The Beatles; we had some picture discs, but that has mostly been it. But for Rubber Soul we are getting coloured vinyl and \u2018Zoetrope\u2019 versions, in addition to the normal black vinyl editions. That\u2019s still far from Macca<\/a> \/ Rolling Stones<\/a> madness when it comes to multiple vinyl options, but maybe there\u2019s more to come, such as a Blood Records announcement? We\u2019ll have to wait and see.<\/p>\n

Rubber Soul will be reissued on 2 October 2026 via UMR\/Calderstone. More product details are here on the SDE post<\/a>, and you can pre-order various formats from the links below. <\/p>\n

Tracklisting <\/p>\n

All tracks below in Dolby Atmos (48\/24) and 96\/24 stereo (both newly mixed by Giles Martin and Sam Okell). The stereo version is the same non-limited file(s) used to cut the vinyl.
\n2026 Atmos & 2026 Stereo<\/p>\n

Drive My Car
\nNorwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
\nYou Won\u2019t See Me
\nNowhere Man
\nThink For Yourself
\nThe Word
\nMichelle
\nWhat Goes On
\nGirl
\nI\u2019m Looking Through You
\nIn My Life
\nWait
\nIf I Needed Someone
\nRun For Your Life<\/p>\n

BONUS TRACKS (2023 Atmos & 2023 Stereo)<\/p>\n

Day Tripper
\nWe Can Work It Out<\/p>\n

VIDEO CONTENT (sync\u2019d to 2023 Atmos & 2023 Stereo)<\/p>\n

Day Tripper
\nDay Tripper (Alternate Version)
\nWe Can Work It Out
\nWe Can Work It Out (Alternate Version)<\/p>\n

SuperDeluxeEdition.com\u00a0helps fans around the world discover physical music and discuss releases. To keep the site free, SDE participates in various affiliate programs, including Amazon and earns from qualifying purchases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week saw the announcement of a Rubber Soul box set. It has been almost four years since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-723415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}