It all begins with a single chord. It’s the sound of heaven condensed to a single robust strum. Get Luther Vandross in here and call it “One Chiming Moment.” People debated the identity of that solitary majestic jangle for decades, literally, before George Harrison confirmed it as Fadd9 during his final months on Earth. That chord announces that the Beatles are in this for the long haul, that they’re more than just teen idols, that there are galaxies of musicality buried deep within those haircuts. From there, the title track to A Hard Day’s Night unfolds like any other rambunctious rocker of the early Beatles era — that is, it’s a total adrenaline rush — and it’s business as usual for the rest of the record. Bring on the head-bobbing pop songs engineered to inspire maximum screaming and the ballads with harmonies expertly triangulated to induce maximum fainting. You can practically see the matching suits. But there’s a twinkle of what’s to come in these songs; they’re a cut above the filler that fleeces the Beatles’ first two albums, in part because this time they dispense with the covers altogether and get busy being the greatest songwriters of their generation. “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “I Should Have Known Better,” “And I Love Her,” “Any Time At All”… you gotta be kidding me! They’re all stupendous, every one of them. Here, disguised as the soundtrack album to the One Direction: This Is Us of its day, is the Beatles’ first masterpiece.