1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 131. The Beatles – The Beatles (White Album) (1968)

 

When I last heard this, some billion years ago, I remember it feeling like a bunch of good tracks held together with filler in order to justify it being a double album, but this time around I’ve revised my opinion of the other tracks, as it’s a real smorgasbord of different musical genres and subjects – like the previous Kinks album ramped up to eleven.

Yes, the album is absolutely chock-full of Beatles classics, from Revolution and Back In The USSR, which sound like Revolver-era, through more psychedelia such as Glass Onion, Savoy Truffle, or Helter Skelter (approaching the genre from different directions), a typical McCartney ballad in Blackbird, a typical Lennon reverie in Dear Prudence, and arguably Harrison’s finest composition, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. There’s even a Ringo composition that is completely straight – Don't Pass Me By.

Other bits that I probably saw as filler are often more music-hall or Twenties jazz themed, like Honey Pie, Bungalow Bill, or Rocky Raccoon. And shockingly, the first reggae track (or reggae adjacent, being more ska) that crops up in the 1001 Albums list is Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and not anything by Desmond Decker or Jimmy Cliff. Which is a little disappointing, but perhaps they didn’t produce any albums that could be considered “essential”. I dunno. Seems a little myopic to me, and given how reggae is as much a basis for a lot of later musicians and musical genres it seems as essential as, say Jacques Brel as an example of chanson.

For me this is probably the best Beatles album so far. Sergeant Pepper gets more of the fame, but although this one lacks a narrative through-line (and does *still* have a bit of padding to be honest), the tracks on it are all of a much greater musical sophistication. There’s also a sense that throughout the Beatles are just messing around. They’ve got the fame and fortune, they can essentially do what they want, and so they do.