Why the White Album

Examining The Beatles’ most unusual album

The album that The Beatles released on November 22, 1968, was unlike anything they had done before. The album had no title, and the cover art had only the words “The Beatles” in gray lettering laid over a white background.

Even more unusual, the album came with two records, containing 30 total songs, and more than an hour and a half of music. For comparison, their landmark June 1967 release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had 13 songs and about 40 minutes of music.

Besides the cover and length, the November 1968 release, which was officially a self-titled album called The Beatles, but which has entered cultural history as The White Album, was unusual in other ways. While the previous two albums, Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Peppers were grand works that featured heavily produced music- often with horn sections, Indian instruments, and extensive studio editing- The White Album was mostly just the band playing their instruments and recording simple rock songs.

So why did the world’s most successful band suddenly release an album that was so unusual and so unlike anything they’d done before or did after?

The traditional story from Beatles lore says that by this point Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were growing apart in a rift that would ultimately disband the group in 1970. The band had stopped touring and performing live in 1966, ostensibly to focus on studio work. But by 1968, the story goes, because of personal and professional feuds, the Beatles were barely functioning as a single unit, and instead the members spent their time separately working on their own music. This led to a large number of songs with different styles, which naturally led to the large catalog and varied nature of The White Album.

But could there have been more to the story? Were there strategic and artistic reasons why The Beatles released such a long and simple album?

To understand their motives better, let’s consider the album cover. The stark simplicity of The White Album is notable on its own, but is even more significant when you consider the band’s previous releases. Not only was the album art for Sgt. Pepper’s colorful and elaborate, many fans and critics saw it as an emblem the psychedelic movement. Much of the music the album contained- songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”- embodied the movement as much as the cover did.

The album that followed, the November 1967 release Magical Mystery Tour, was even more psychedelic in nature. While Sgt. Pepper’s artwork depicted the band in colorful military costumes standing in a field with cardboard cutouts of famous people, Magical Mystery Tour had the band dressed in full animal costumes over a surreal background. The music contained several psychedelic and hippie anthems, such as “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “All You Need is Love.”

The Beatles in 1967 were a social and cultural force as much as they were a music group. Since 1963, the group had been inspiring trends- hairstyles, fashion accessories, guitar brands, and so much more. After Sgt. Pepper’s, they were impacting and embodying entire movements.

So, could the group have reached a point where they felt that their massive popularity had created an overbearing pressure to produce the next big thing? Were fans expecting more out them than just music? For The Beatles in late 1967, was just producing good music not enough for fans and critics that by now were expecting a social movement with each album?

This could help explain the nearly blank cover of The White Album. According to this theory, the cover was the group’s attempt to remove any association between the album and cultural and popular movements. The White Album was to be about the music. No costumes, no flowers, no extravagance. All the album buyer could do was put the album on and listen to the music.

The Beatles did not intend this concept solely for the listeners. The clean slate that the cover represented extended to how the group wrote, developed and recorded their music. They could now work on what they wanted without worrying about how it would fit into the prevailing trends and social movements.

Think of Paul McCartney’s gentle “Blackbird,” or George Harrison’s melancholy “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” or John Lennon’s bitter “Sexy Sadie.” Where could they have fit on Sgt. Pepper’s? The White Album gave The Beatles a platform to develop a wider variety of their artistic ideas. Freed from the constraint of a cultural and social expectations, the group produced a large assortment of music that naturally led to the 30 songs and 90-plus minutes of music on The White Album.

The success of the White Album, and the newfound freedom from cultural and mainstream pop expectations, guided The Beatles artistically through their final masterpiece, September 1969's Abbey Road, and guided the band members individually, as seen in John Lennon’s first two solo releases, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine.

By releasing an album with no title and a nearly blank cover, The Beatles removed any associations with and expectations from cultural and popular movements. The result was more than an hour and a half of new and varied music with a simplicity that allowed the band members to truly show their musical strengths. For the first time in a long time, The Beatles were just musicians, and not a cultural force. This shift in mindset, which guided them as a group and individually through their next several albums, led to some of the era’s most memorable music.