Not a Second Time. (Followed by It Won’t Be Long, followed by All My Loving.)
About the same time period separated With The Beatles from both the prior and later albums; it may seem odd but: ISTM that while Please, Please Me was set up as sort of a selection from what would be the best and freshest of their sets at the time, WTB was sort of “oh, so you liked that, well we also do these, they are a whole lot like the first bunch”. Which would be normal for a second album, “let’s not mess with the formula for our last success” rather than seeking to one-up the previous effort. Some material on WTB was pre-PPM carryovers (Hold Me Tight was tried for PPM but rejected at the time) or more of the covers repertoire dating all the way back to Hamburg (Roll Over Beethoven).
I wonder if the production unit may have been thinking, let’s hold the line for stepped up quality works for the all-originals third album; plus with A Hard Day’s Night you had the movie deal motivating an effort to show the world that yes, they’ve hit the big time because they deserve it.
To the OP: “Fair collection”? It’s my second favorite Beatles LP! (after Revolver and ahead of Abbey Road).
I see not only the OP thinks it was a weak effort. Oh, well, at least Kurt Cobain agrees with me.