The Beatles released 1 on November 13, 2000, gathering 27 UK or US No. 1 songs onto a single CD. The sequence stretched from “Love Me Do” to “The Long and Winding Road,” covering the band’s singles from 1962 to 1970. Its organizing principle was simple, but the choice of charts determined which familiar songs made the cut.
The release also gave “Come Together” a new visual identity. Melon Dezign created an animated video for the launch of the compilation and the Beatles’ official website, adapting a 1969 recording to the limitations of the early web. With many listeners using dial-up connections, a conventional video could mean a small picture and repeated buffering. Flash animation and vector graphics kept the complete clip to about eight megabytes while allowing its images to scale. The technology helped make a new video practical for an older recording.
Producer George Martin explained in his notes for the collection that the selections came from Record Retailer in Britain and Billboard in America. A song needed to top either chart, so the two countries’ different release histories mattered. “Love Me Do” qualified through its American success despite reaching only No. 17 on its original UK run. At the other end of the compilation, “The Long and Winding Road” had been a US No. 1 without receiving a contemporary British single release.
That rule also explains two conspicuous absences. “Please Please Me” topped several British charts in 1963, but peaked at No. 2 on Record Retailer. “Strawberry Fields Forever” shared a UK double A-side with “Penny Lane,” and that release also peaked at No. 2 on the chart used for the compilation. In America, the songs charted separately: “Penny Lane” reached No. 1, while “Strawberry Fields Forever” did not. Their shared single history therefore produced different outcomes on 1. By contrast, both “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out” qualified through their British double A-side No. 1.
The chronological approach also preserved the distance the band traveled between those hits. Martin described the period as “a lifetime in the world of rock and roll.” The CD booklet supplied another way into that history, pairing individual song information with reproductions of international single sleeves. Listeners could follow how the records had been presented and released alongside the music itself.
1 became a major chart release in its own right. It spent nine consecutive weeks at No. 1 in Britain across 2000 and 2001 and finished 2000 as the country’s biggest-selling album. Nielsen SoundScan’s decade-end report subsequently ranked it as the best-selling US album of 2000–2009, with approximately 11.6 million copies sold.
The collection’s visual side expanded in November 2015. Giles Martin and Sam Okell prepared new mixes at Abbey Road Studios, while restored promotional films and performances accompanied the songs on video editions. The deluxe 1+ added a second video disc containing 23 clips. That broader selection included “Please Please Me” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” giving both songs a place in the expanded package after the original audio compilation’s chart rules had excluded them.
