Ruminations on the Beatles: With the Beatles

The story of me and this album is really a story of cover versions. See, as I said in the previous post, I didn't get into the early Beatles until later in life, and the fact that I eventually did is largely due to the film Across the Universe. In the early part of that film, several early Beatles tunes are given stirring renditions that allow the true power of each to shine through. Among my personal favorites were "It Won't Be Long" and "All My Loving" both of which hail from With the Beatles.
Another song I heard as a cover version first was "You've Really Got a Hold on Me", though this is not a Beatles original. It's an older soul tune, but the version I first heard was by Zooey Deschanel's band She and Him. I vaguely recognized it, found it on With the Beatles and learned to love it before I even realized it was a cover itself.
After a litle research, I found out that about half this album is comprised of covers of rock and roll standards of the time.  Some real classics are there ("Roll Over Beethoven", "Money (Thats What I Want)"), as well as a version of "Til There Was You" that became my wife and I's wedding song.
The covers on this album show the range and musical muscle of the early Beatles, and the versions I first heard, decades after this album's release, are a testament to the staying power of eveything the Beatles touched, even things that weren't theirs to begin with. They may not have had the most definitive versions of all these songs, or the highest grossing, but I'd be willing to bet that when a modern day listener hears one of the aforementioned songs, they'll say "Hey, isn't that the Beatles? "