The Beatles Meetup Group

Let It Be is the twelfth and final studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 8 May 1970, nearly a month following the official announcement of the group's public break-up, in tandem with the documentary of the same name.

In April, the Beatles issued the lead single "Get Back", backed with "Don't Let Me Down", after which engineer Glyn Johns prepared and submitted mixes of the album, then titled Get Back, which the band rejected. As bootlegs of these mixes circulated widely among fans,[2] the project lay in limbo, and the group moved on to the recording of Abbey Road, released that September.

When the documentary film was resurrected for a cinema release, as Let It Be, Lennon and Harrison asked American producer Phil Spector to assemble the accompanying album. Among Spector's choices was to include a 1968 take of "Across the Universe" and apply orchestral and choral overdubs to "Let It Be", "Across the Universe" and "The Long and Winding Road". His work offended McCartney, particularly in the case of the latter, which was the third and final single of the album.

Let It Be topped record charts in several countries, including both the UK and the US. However, it was a critical failure at the time, and came to be regarded as one of the most controversial rock albums in history, though retrospective reception has been more positive.[3][4] In 2003, McCartney spearheaded Let It Be... Naked, an alternative version of Let It Be that removes Spector's embellishments and alters the tracklist.