Beatles album With the Beatles and had issued several singles which were not included on any UK albums with the exception of the first two ("Please Please Me"/"Ask Me Why" and "Love Me Do"/"PS I Love You"). While the Beatles' first two British albums each contained 14 tracks, in the American market albums were typically limited to 12 tracks and it was expected for albums to include the current hit single. The first three tracks on the album include the December 1963 Capitol single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" along with the record's B-sides both in the United States, "I Saw Her Standing There," and in the UK with "This Boy" from the original November 1963 release. Neither "I Want to Hold Your Hand" nor "This Boy" had appeared on album at the time in the UK, while "I Saw Her Standing There" had been the lead-off track to the band's debut album. The other nine tracks on Meet the Beatles! are duplicated from its nearest UK counterpart album With the Beatles. Those were Beatles original songs and not cover versions of songs done by other artists with exception of "Till There Was You". The remaining five tracks from With the Beatles were songs originally recorded by other artists. Capitol determined that for their first album they would only include original and fresh material. There was fear that the remakes would turn Americans off of the Beatles. The other five songs would appear on Capitol's next American LP, The Beatles' Second Album, released in April 1964. The songs "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "This Boy" are in a duophonic [fake] stereo, as Capitol had not been provided proper stereo mixes. Critical reception The album was included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). In 2003, the album was ranked at number 59 on Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, re-ranked at number 53 on the 2012 list, and re-ranked at number 197 in 2020. Commercial performance In the U.S., the album debuted at No. 92 on the album chart for the week ending 1 February 1964. Two weeks later, it peaked at #1 where it remained eleven consecutive weeks, eventually replaced by The Beatles' Second Album. It sold 4,045,174 copies by 31 December 1964, and 4,699,348 copies by the