group's most uneven album" yet added that its best moments find them "moving from Merseybeat to the sophisticated pop/rock they developed in mid-career". Tom Ewing of Pitchfork Media said, "Lennon's anger and the band's rediscovery of rock 'n' roll mean For Sales reputation as the group's meanest album is deserved". Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph commented that "if this is a low point, they still sound fantastic", adding that "the Beatlemania pop songs are of a high standard, even if they are becoming slightly generic." Writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rob Sheffield said that the album contains some poor cover versions yet "I'm a Loser" and "What You're Doing" indicate that the band were continuing to progress. He added: "The harmonies of 'Baby's in Black,' the hair-raising 'I still loooove her' climax of 'I Don't Want to Spoil the Party,' the eager hand claps in 'Eight Days a Week' – it all makes 'Mr. Moonlight' easy to forgive." In his review for BBC Music, David Quantick highlights Lennon's "brilliant, throat-ripping version" of "Rock and Roll Music" and describes the album as "joyous, inventive and exciting", despite the Beatles' fatigue, and a "transitional" work that showed the group developing their studio craft. "I'm a Loser" served as a precursor to the 1965 folk-rock explosion, which was led by the Byrds and defined by a combination of Dylanesque lyrics and Beatles-style harmonies. According to The Encyclopedia of Country Music, "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" can be seen "with hindsight" as an early example of country rock, anticipating the Byrds' work in that style, particularly their 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. In a February 1970 interview following a recording session with Starr and Harrison, Stephen Stills, then part of the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, said he first began listening to the Beatles around the time of Beatles for Sale, adding: "that's still where I'm at, incidentally, and so is everybody else – and maybe at that time they were at their biggest and most isolated, and thus at their closest." Beatles for Sale was ranked the 71st-best album in the 1987 edition of Paul Gambaccini's book Critic's Choice, based on submissions from an international panel of 81 critics and broadcasters. In 2000, it was voted number 204 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums. Based on Beatles for Sales