Back In The USSR
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Wild Honey Pie
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Martha My Dear
I'm So Tired
Blackbird
Piggies
Rocky Raccoon
Don't Pass Me By
Why Don't We Do It In The Road
I Will
Julia
Birthday
Yer Blues
Mother Nature's Son
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey
Sexy Sadie
Helter Skelter
Long Long Long
Revolution 1
Honey Pie
Savoy Truffle
Cry Baby Cry
Revolution 9
Good Night
It couldn't have been easy to follow Sgt. Pepper, least of all given that by 1968 the four Beatles were a group in name only. Like almost every double album since, the White Album is one disc longer than it should be. But take away its weakest elements - the unlistenable sprawl of "Revolution 9" for a kick-off, whimsical fillers like "Rocky Racoon" and "Wild Honey Pie" and the cloddish "Every Body's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey" - and you're left with some bursts of Beatles brilliance in a ragged edged patchwork quilt. Falling apart, they still made music that outclassed most groups at their peak. Really it should have been the Black Album. John Lennon plumbs new depths of bleakness in "Yer Blues", "Sexy Sadie" and "I'm So Tired", while the hymn to his dead mother ("Julia") and "Cry Baby Cry" convey the merest veneer of prettiness. George Harrison sounds either bitter ("Piggies", Savoy Truffle") or morose ("Long, Long, Long", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"). And while Paul McCartney applies his awesome melody gifts as winsomely as ever in "Mother Nature's Son", there's an unsetting ambivalence in "Blackbird", a certain cynical edge to "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Back In The USSR" and nothing in the least cute about "Helter Skelter", the only pop song credited with inspiring mass murder.