History Music / AbbeyRoad

* TextlessAlbumCover: [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sTg8FgiqVVU/VbEn21OyGxI/AAAAAAABrAE/UoWav-uxJjQ/s1600/abbey-road-back-cover.jpg Here's the rear cover]]. The "Abbey Road" sign was authentic to 1969, although it has since been removed; the "Beatles" part was added in the photographer's studio. The identity of the woman in the blue dress remains unknown to this day, and there's still disagreement as to whether she was added intentionally or whether she was just a pedestrian walking by as Iain Macmillan took his picture.

The album was recorded when there was still tension among the band members, but they put their differences aside for one last time. As a result, everyone got to shine, with Music/GeorgeHarrison proving he was every bit as good a songwriter as John and Paul, penning 2 #1 hits: "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun". Music/JohnLennon had a chart topper himself, "Come Together", while Music/PaulMcCartney arranged the perfect GrandFinale for the band on side B and Music/RingoStarr created a children's classic and hit with "Octopus's Garden".

* TheEnd: "The End". Duh? Subverted really, as "Her Majesty" is the actual last song on the album (it was a HiddenTrack on the original release). This occurred because it was cut out of the song medley on the second half and the Beatles' engineers didn't want to throw away any of their music.
** "The End" is also the very last song the Beatles recorded together (and the only song where Ringo has a drum solo).[[note]]The last song all four Beatles recorded together, that is. Paul, George, and Ringo convened on Jan. 3, 1970 to record "I Me Mine".[[/note]]

* MoodWhiplash: Listening to "I Want You (She's So Heavy) after "Octopus's Garden".

** The band saying goodbye with their final medley, "Golden Slumbers" to "Carry That Weight" to "The End", and the listener has got be sitting there thinking OMG it's all over... and then "Her Majesty" comes up as a hidden track, a sweet little snippet of a song that comes across as a lark, with a smile on the lads' faces, and you realise they're leaving but they're leaving on a happy note.

** The album cover. It's just the band crosswalk/zebra crossing and still it looks awesome enough to be imitated, parodied and referenced by people all across the world.

** "Here Comes The Sun'', where the sun rising suddenly makes everybody happy again and hopeful for the future.

** When engineer John Kurlander clipped "Her Majesty" out of its spot in the master between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" (see HiddenTrack above), he missed the last note of "Her Majesty", which was left at the beginning of "Polythene Pam". Thus, the recording of "Her Majesty" on the finished album also ends abruptly, one note too soon. ''[[VideoGame/RockBand The Beatles Rock Band]]'' finally restored the missing final chord, to some controversy among fans who preferred the lack of resolution. ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGs "The Long One"]] edit of the medley on the ''Super Deluxe Edition'' shows what it may have sounded like had its original position been kept, albeit those with a good ear can hear how the edit shoehorned the song back in a bit.)

-->''Well you should see Polythene Pam\\
She's so good-looking but she looks like a man...''

* BittersweetEnding: The famous medley at the end of the album that starts from "You Never Give Me Your Money" until (appropiately) "The End" seems to have as a theme that, even if good things must come to an end, it was good while it lasted.

* FadingIntoTheNextSong: The famous medley, which starts from "You Never Give Me Your Money" and goes through "The End", with only one clean break between songs. "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" comes to a full stop before "Golden Slumbers" starts. However, some of these are also SiameseTwinSongs.

* LastNoteNightmare: "Her Majesty", which comes in 20 seconds after "The End" and starts off with a ''DUNN'' chord, surprising a lot of listeners. It's also so short that it's over before the listener knows what is happening.

** When engineer John Kurlander clipped "Her Majesty" out of its spot in the master between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" (see HiddenTrack above), he missed the last note of "Her Majesty", which was left at the beginning of "Polythene Pam". Thus the recording of "Her Majesty" on the finished album also ends abruptly, one note too soon. ''[[VideoGame/RockBand The Beatles Rock Band]]'' finally restored the missing final chord, to some controversy among fans who preferred the lack of resolution. ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGs "The Long One"]] edit of the medley on the ''Super Deluxe Edition'' shows what it may have sounded like had its original position been kept, albeit those with a good ear can hear how the edit shoehorned the song back in a bit.)

* PepTalkSong: "Carry That Weight", with the uplifting message that despite carrying your heavy past along with you one should still carry on.

--->''And in the end the love you take\\

-->''Well listen to that Mal... hehehe. Oh, look out! You should... SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW.''

* WordSaladLyrics: "Come Together" is one of the most famous examples ("He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola"). "Because" could also qualify.

** "Polythene Pam" and "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" were recorded together as a single performance. You can hear John Lennon saying "Oh, look out!" right before the change.

* LongTitle: "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window".

''Abbey Road'' is the twelfth studio album by Music/TheBeatles, released in 1969. It is their last recorded album, but was released as their penultimate offering; because the band split up shortly before the release of the earlier-recorded (but later-released) ''Music/LetItBe'' in 1970, ''Abbey Road'' serves as the final studio album released during the Beatles' lifetime.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Paul is walking barefoot on the album cover. He told journalists that he just did this because it was hot that day, but some believers in the "Paul Is Dead" theory claimed it was either a reference to a Mafia symbol for "death", or part of a funeral motif, with Paul as the corpse with his eyes closed and ready to be buried without shoes (plus George as a gravedigger, Ringo as a pallbearer and John as a preacher).

* FailedASpotCheck: No one in the court noticed Maxwell getting the ''murder weapon'' and stalking the judge in the courtroom? Rose and Valerie must have been making a ''hell'' of a commotion for no one see what Max was doing with his silver hammer.

* HiddenTrack: "Her Majesty". Originally, this was meant to be part of the 'medley' between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam". The chord at the beginning is the ending note to the former track. Music/PaulMcCartney didn't like the way it sounded, and so it was cut off from the album. The tape operator, John Kurlander, followed the record company's guidelines of never throwing anything recorded by The Beatles out, and not knowing what else to do with it he attached it to the end of the master reel, after "The End". Paul liked it. So it stayed. Originally it was a true HiddenTrack, not listed with the other tracks on the back album cover. Later pressings of ''Abbey Road'' list "Her Majesty", making it more like TheStinger.

* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: The last verse of "Sun King", which is Lennon singing vaguely [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages Romance language]]-sounding gibberish. Interestingly, the lyrics are made up of actual words from Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, plus a couple stray English phrases (the Liverpool schoolyard slang term "chicka ferdy" and "cake and eat it"), but put together in a sufficiently nonsensical way to sound like AsLongAsItSoundsForeign gibberish.

-->''Maxwell must go free!''

* ExcitedShowTitle: "Oh! Darling"

** When engineer John Kurlander clipped "Her Majesty" out of its spot in the master between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" (see HiddenTrack above), he missed the last note of "Her Majesty", which was left at the beginning of "Polythene Pam". Thus the recording of "Her Majesty" on the finished album also ends abruptly, one note too soon. ''[[VideoGame/RockBand The Beatles Rock Band]]'' finally restored the missing final chord, to some controversy among fans who preferred the lack of resolution. ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGs "The Long One"]] edit of the medley on the ''Super Deluxe Edition'' shows what it may have sounded like had its original position been kept, albeit those with a good ear can hear how the edit shoehorned the song back in in a bit.)

** When engineer John Kurlander clipped "Her Majesty" out of its spot in the master between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" (see HiddenTrack above), he missed the last note of "Her Majesty", which was left at the beginning of "Polythene Pam". Thus the recording of "Her Majesty" on the finished album also ends abruptly, one note too soon. ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Ujexj9YGs "The Long One"]] edit of the medley on the ''Super Deluxe Edition'' shows what it may have sounded like had its original position been kept, albeit those with a good ear can hear how the edit shoehorned the song back in in a bit.)

* TextlessAlbumCover: [[https://www.biography.com/.image/t_share/MTE5NTU2MzIzNzI4NjU1ODgz/abbey-road-back-cover2jpg.jpg Here's the rear cover]]. The "Abbey Road" sign was authentic to 1969, although it has since been removed; the "Beatles" part was added in the photographer's studio. The identity of the woman in the blue dress remains unknown to this day, and there's still disagreement as to whether she was added intentionally or whether she was just a pedestrian walking by as Iain Macmillan took his picture.

* SurpriseCreepy: "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". It starts out with Maxwell, a med student, asking science major Joan out on a date. It sounds a lot like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" off Music/TheWhiteAlbum, another cheerful [=McCartney=] ditty about young love. Then Maxwell bashes Joan's skull in with the hammer.

* SurpriseCreepy: "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". It starts out with Maxwell, a med student, asking science major Joan out on a date, and it sounds a lot like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" off Music/TheWhiteAlbum, another cheerful [=McCartney=] ditty about young love. Then Maxwell bashes Joan's skull in with the hammer.