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Originally Posted by boo boo
That makes no sense. Sgt Peppers and Abbey Road sound absolutely nothing like The Beatles when they first got popular. Hell, the best Beatles albums are the ones that sound the least like The Beatles.
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It wasn't about what they "sound like". It's about being true to yourself. The Beatles went from a beat band, to slowly emerging as a full fledged folk rock band in 1965. But then, in 1966, they abandoned rock'n'roll and rock'n'roll trends altogether in order to get closer to pop. And so, out came the Brill Building-inspired Revolver, an album dedicated to highly-sophisticated and immaculately arranged pop compositions like the Beatles had never done before. This is what the Beatles were destined to become: John and Paul finally play to their ultimate strengths (both were geniuses of melody) and stop trying to rock out and keep up with the rock'n'roll crowd.
This was the Beatles. They were finally truly an entity unto themselves. They had found their niche, they had made themselves truly important and vital as songwriters by making such a masterwork of an album. Sgt Pepper continued along the same lines and took this idea even further, the result being the most sophisticated pop album there had ever been.
And then they reverse all of that with The White Album. Instead of trying to push even further, they become trend followers again and try this time to be all those other contemporary styles that in reality they really were not. The icing on the cake is Revolution 9, the avant-garde jam that everybody else with any interest in that sorta thing (e.g. Fugs, Zappa) did 2 years earlier: at least do it when it's still relevant! Anyway...
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And its retarded to hate on a album just because its a great departure in style. By that logic you should consider David Bowie's Low to be one of the worst albums ever made.
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It's not that it's a departure in style, it's that it's a departure from personal exploration and development.
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The White Album has a few lousy filler tracks like Wild Honey Pie, Piggies, Don't Let Me Down and Revolution 9. But most of the tracks are great, and Dear Prudence, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Helter Skelter, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Julia, Blackbird, Glass Onion and Sexy Sadie are among the very best Beatles songs.
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I think Glass Onion is trash, the others are very good songs and I could include many more on top of that from the same album. Still, few really hold a candle to the best of Revolver and Sgt Pepper.
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And whats wrong with that? Why can't an album just be judged by the quality of the songs?
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Isn't the LP by that point supposed to be the unified statement? At any rate, I think one'd be hard-pressed to argue that the pure quality of the songs matches the output of the previous two years (including Magical Mystery Tour double EP and the singles like Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields).
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You make no sense. All of the best Beatles albums are the ones that consists of songs that were written solely by one person. As opposed to their earlier stuff where Lennon and McCartney were tight collaberators and Harrison had very little to say. The Beatles were at their BEST when each member started having more control over his own vision.
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Yeah, true, yet they still kept in mind the point that they were writing material for a single album and hence stayed on the same page as much as that was possible without obstructing their own personal goals. Thus, the conceptual unity of those albums (including Abbey Road). The White Album is the one where they are truly not on the same page and might as well be writing solo records.
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