The Beatles release Let It Be

Let It Be is the twelfth and final studio album by the English rock band The Beatles.

It was released on 8 May 1970 by the band's Apple Records label shortly after the group's announced breakup.

Most of Let It Be was recorded in January 1969, before the recording and release of the album Abbey Road. For this reason, some critics and fans, such as Mark Lewisohn, argue that Abbey Road should really be considered the group's final album and Let It Be the penultimate. Let It Be was originally intended to be released prior to Abbey Road at some point during mid-1969 under the title Get Back but the Beatles were unhappy with this version of the album, which was mixed and compiled by Glyn Johns, and it was temporarily shelved. A new version of the album was created from the studio tapes by Phil Spector in 1970 and then finally released as Let It Be. The album acts as a soundtrack album for the 1970 motion picture of the same name, which is a documentary film of the band rehearsing and recording the album. While two songs from the sessions were released as singles prior to this album's release, "Get Back" and "Let It Be", the songs were remixed by Spector for release on this album.

The album was met with mixed reviews at the time of its release. NME critic Alan Smith wrote "If the new Beatles soundtrack is to be their last then it will stand as a cheapskate epitaph, a cardboard tombstone, a sad and tatty end to a musical fusion which wiped clean and drew again the face of pop". Rolling Stone magazine was also critical of the album, citing Spector's production embellishments as a sore point: "Musically, boys, you passed the audition. In terms of having the judgment to avoid either over-producing yourselves or casting the fate of your get-back statement to the most notorious of all over-producers, you didn't..."