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\n\tFall is always Rubber Soul<\/a> <\/em>Season. The Beatles<\/a>\u2019 1965 masterpiece has always been autumn-coded, with its bristling guitars, wistful vocals, pensive lyrics. But this fall, Rubber Soul <\/em>has been in the air even more than usual, because of the phenomenal new Special Edition,<\/a> which gets you up close with John, Paul, George, and Ringo like never before. Their most emotional album. Their moodiest. Their wittiest. Their best. <\/p>\n \n\tSo what is it that makes Rubber Soul <\/em>the Beatles\u2019 best album? It\u2019s a loaded question, but for some of us, there\u2019s a correct answer, and it\u2019s simple: It all comes down to the singing. In addition to everything else it is, Rubber Soul<\/em> is the best place to hear John, Paul, George, and Ringo sing together. It\u2019s four boys telling their stories out loud\u2014you can hear them puzzling out the tales as they sing, bouncing ideas off each other, daring each other to dig a little deeper.<\/p>\n \n\tOver the decades, each era chooses its own Beatles album to deify as the ultimate Fabs masterpiece. In the vinyl era, it was Sgt. Pepper<\/a><\/em>; the CD era chose Revolver<\/a><\/em>; the streaming era has anointed Abbey Road<\/a><\/em>. It would be diplomatic and civilized to say that all these albums are equally<\/em> great\u2026but this will never do, because we all take our own personal Beatles so seriously, and you\u2019d have to be some kind of Mr. Mustard to pretend you don\u2019t have a favorite, and for me, that\u2019s always been Rubber Soul<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Beatles had to bash out this album in a hurry, in October 1965, to rush some product into the shops in time for Christmas. They wrote seven of the songs in a week, pushing the deadline right down to the final hours. But they had a phenomenal hot streak. (Or should we say, it once had them?) Even the quickies have soul \u2014 like \u201cMichelle,\u201d a trifle Paul wrote in his teens for the specific purpose of wooing Liverpool art-student girls by pretending to be French.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut the thing that makes Rubber Soul<\/em> stand out, head and moptops above the rest, is the singing, with these four boys mingling their voices, each sha-la-la <\/em>and each na-na-na<\/em>, each in-my-life <\/em>and no-I-wouldn\u2019t<\/em> so charged with raw emotion. Their voices were changing from boys to men \u2014 Ringo and John were 25, Paul 23, George 22 \u2014 and you can hear their irresistible excitement that they can now emote as the world-weary men they always aspired to be.<\/p>\n