The White Album

No, that's not whitespace, that's the album cover.

The White Album is the unofficial title for The Beatles' album The Beatles (1968). The record owes its nickname to the completely white album cover.

The White Album was the Beatles' first double album. The songs feature a lot of variation in style and mood. Overall the record sounds almost like a compilation record featuring the band members as solo artists instead of a unity. Though not as popular as other Beatles records like Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road, The White Album is still a huge inspiration for numerous rock bands. When something gets compared to The White Album, it's almost invariably a shorthand way of saying "long album with huge Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly variety of styles, inevitably will attract complaints about filler".

Tropes used in The White Album include:
  • Alliteration: "Rocky Raccoon", "Bungalow Bill", "Sexy Sadie"
  • Affectionate Parody: Several songs on this album imitate a certain musical style and whether these songs are a homage or a parody (or both) are left to the individual listener's opinion.
  • Age Progression Song: "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da".
  • Album Filler: George Martin even asked the Beatles to trim it down to one album since he felt there was too much filler, but the band didn't listen, being eager to fulfill their album commitment to the EMI record label as quickly as possible, and being unable to agree which songs to remove (Harrison noted that by that point there was "too much ego" involved).
  • And Starring: Eric Clapton plays guitar on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
  • Biting the Hand Humor: "Glass Onion" is a sarcastic attack on their obsessive fans.
  • Broken Record:
    • "Wild Honey Pie" ("HONEY PIE! HONEY PIE!") and "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?", widely considered to be White Album Filler.
  • Call Back: The lyrics of "Glass Onion" consist almost entirely of references to the band's previous songs, including "I Am the Walrus", "She Loves You", "The Fool on the Hill", "Fixing a Hole", and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the case of "The Fool on the Hill", the song even includes a little snatch of flute as a musical echo of the original's introduction.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • "Glass Onion" seems to be built entirely on this.
    • "Savoy Truffle" - "We all know 'Ob-La-Di-Blah-Da'..."
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Several songs like "Cry Baby Cry", "Julia", "Piggies",... are quite haunting compared to their previous songs.
    • "Revolution 9" is perhaps their edgiest track ever officially released.
  • Dead Baby Comedy: The little piggies in "Piggies" are whacked down and then eaten by other pigs.
  • Epic Rocking:
  • Everything's Better with Chocolate: "Savoy Truffle"
  • Evolving Music: "Revolution" and "Revolution 1", two very different takes on the same song.
  • Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Helter Skelter", and too many times to count on "Revolution 9".
  • Genre Roulette / In the Style Of:
    • Many of the album's more acoustic-based songs seem to draw from Folk Rock.
    • "Rocky Raccoon," more or less an explicit semi-Affectionate Parody of cowboy ballads.
    • "Honey Pie" is a direct homage to the British music hall style, so sayeth The Other Wiki.
    • "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is ska.
    • "Helter Skelter" is incredibly heavy, and has been called one of the first Heavy Metal songs on occasion.
    • "Long, Long, Long" is very Bob Dylan; George admitted it was heavily inspired by "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands".
    • "Birthday" is a slightly traditionalist rock n' roll song.
    • "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" is more or less a Little Richard tribute.
    • "Good Night" sounds like a crooner song. John Lennon purposefully told George Martin to write a cheesy Nelson Riddle-type string arrangement.
    • Country fan Ringo brought in a Nashville fiddler for "Don't Pass Me By", his first solo songwriting credit.
  • Grief Song: "Julia", about John's mother.
  • Hidden Track: "Can You Take Me Back", the song fragment on Side 4 of the White Album (included at the end of "Cry Baby Cry" on modern CD tracks), which to this day doesn't even have an official title.
  • Intercourse with You: "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?"
  • Last-Note Nightmare:
    • Particularly "Long, Long, Long".
    • "Helter Skelter" is a different sort of Last-Note Nightmare, as it finishes with Ringo throwing his drumsticks across the room and screaming "I GOT BLISTERS ON MAH FINGERS!!" The version that wound up on the "White Album" was the 18th take of the day. That explains the blisters.
  • Lighter and Softer: "Revolution 1", compared to the single version.
  • Long Title: "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey"
  • Metal Scream:
    • "Revolution", "Helter Skelter"
    • The single, "Revolution", is a much faster and heavier (and louder) version of "Revolution 1". As Giles Martin said on the sleeve-notes for Love, "even today it defines 'distortion'
  • Mind Screw:
    • "Revolution 9". While "Revolution 1" is a nice, slow, relatively tame rock song (especially compared to the harsher single), "Revolution 9" is eight minutes of pure, untapped, minimalist cacophony. A Last-Note Nightmare, that really is a nightmare, regardless if it's a whole song...
    • Number nine, number nine, number nine...
  • Minimalistic Cover Art: The Beatles is all white, save for the name of the album embossed onto it, and on some LP printings, a unique serial number stamped on it (going for a bit of irony in something so plain also being unique from every other copy of it). Ever since, fans have called it "The White Album".
  • Momma's Boy: The titular character of "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" is "the all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son." And behind that tough exterior, he really does rely on his mom's defense when people start to question him - hence why he always brings her along on hunting trips "in case of accidents."
  • Murder Ballad: "Rocky Raccoon", "Piggies"
  • Obsession Song: "Julia".
  • One-Scene Wonder: Eric Clapton came to the studio at his friend George's request to play on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". He delivered probably the best guitar solo to ever appear on a Beatles record.
  • One-Woman Song: "Julia", "Sexy Sadie"
  • Out-of-Clothes Experience: Alluded to in "Revolution 9." "If... you become naked."
  • The Parody/Affectionate Parody: The song "Back in the USSR" is both a parody of Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA" and a decent imitation of The Beach Boys' distinctive "Surfing Sound".
  • Precision F-Strike: "Piggies". "What they need's a damn good whacking." George's mother actually suggested the line.
  • Protest Song: Subverted with "Revolution", a protest about protesters (and specifically those supportive of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in John's "Chairman Mao" reference" - this may specifically refer to then-recent May '68 general strike and protests in France, where many student protesters marched holding up pictures of Chairman Mao).
  • Punny Name: "Bungalow Bill" instead of "Buffalo Bill"
  • Real Life Writes The Song:
    • "Dear Prudence" was inspired by Prudence Farrow who kept inside meditating while the group was in India.
    • Bungalow Bill was a tiger-hunting man they met in Rishikesh.
    • Sexy Sadie was directed towards the Maharishi, who was accused of molesting one woman, infuriating John.
  • Record Producer: George Martin.
  • Sampling: "Revolution 9"
  • Scare Chord:
    • Ends "Piggies".
    • The ending of "Long Long Long" is way scarier. A case of Throw It In helps, as a wine bottle placed on the Hammond organ's Leslie speaker began to shake when Paul hit a certain note. George added the wailing voice and Ringo threw in the ominous snare roll. It sounds like a coffin is closing at a funeral while the widow weeps.
  • Self-Backing Vocalist: Paul on "I Will" and "Wild Honey Pie". John, who usually didn't do this, had a duet with himself (interpolating lines) on "Julia".
  • Self-Titled Album: The Beatles, although pretty much everyone knows it better as "The White Album".
  • Shout-Out:
    • "Julia"--while it's about John's late mother, guess what the Japanese for "ocean child" is?
    • "Martha My Dear" is about Paul McCartney's dog.
    • "Savoy Truffle" lists a lot of actual flavors of chocolate, and is also a joke about Eric Clapton's weakness for chocolate.
  • Single-Stanza Song: "Wild Honey Pie" and "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" . Also, "Can You Take Me Back", the Hidden Track right before "Revolution 9".
  • Something Blues: "Yer Blues".
  • Song of Song Titles: "Glass Onion" on the White Album name-checks "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am The Walrus", "Fixing a Hole", "Lady Madonna" and "The Fool On The Hill".
  • Spoken Word in Music: "Revolution 9"
  • Studio Chatter: The end of "Piggies", the beginning of "Revolution 1", and most famously Ringo's "I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!!!" at the end of "Helter Skelter".
  • Subliminal Seduction: Unfortunately it happened to Charles Manson.
  • Take That: "Sexy Sadie" was aimed at the Maharishi.
  • Unplugged Version:
    • "Revolution 1", in contrast to the single version.
    • George Harrison recorded a well-known acoustic version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." It finally got released on The Beatles Anthology.

"Good night. Good night everybody. Everybody, everywhere.
Good night."

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