Rank the White Album

BEST

1. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
28.Helter Skelter
12.Happiness Is a Warm Gun
19.Revolution 1
9. Julia
7. I'm So Tired
6. I Will
...and then there's a bunch of average stuff I can't be bothered to rank...
23.Don't Pass Me By
25.Why Don't We Do It In The Road
20.Birthday
Wild Honey Pie
10.Martha My Dear
29.Revolution 9
3. Honey Pie

WORST

As the years have gone by, my personal faves have remained:

1. I'm So Tired
2. Glass Onion
3. Sexie Sadie
4. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
5. Why Don't We Do It In The Road
6. Happiness Is A Warm Gun
7. Blackbird
8. Back In The USSR
9. Revolution 1 (which really belongs at # 1 but I'm too lazy to edit)
10. Martha My Dear

And most of the rest fall into line

The worst track/s by far is one, if not both of, the Honey Pies.

GOOD:
Blackbird
Long, Long, Long
Julia
Dear Prudence
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Mother Nature's Son
Sexy Sadie
Rocky Racoon
Cry Baby Cry
Back In The USSR
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
Helter Skelter

FAIR TO MIDDLING:
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
I'm So Tired
Martha My Dear
Glass Onion
Birthday
Wild Honey Pie

NOT MUCH COP:
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
Honey Pie
I Will
Why Don't We Do It In The Road
Savoy Truffle
Revolution 9

FOUL:
Piggies
Revolution 1 (so dreary and plodding compared to the single)
Good Night
Don't Pass Me By
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Yer Blues

.... which is pretty good for a Beatles album. Overall, I'd say "Rocky Racoon" is probably my favourite track and that I prefer McCartney to Lennon - sorry Beatlefans!

Yeah, come on Rockers! Open your minds!

1. Because
2. Tomorrow Never Knows
3. Strawberry Fields Forever
4. It's Only A Northern Song
5. Penny Lane
6. She's Leaving Home
7. What's The New Mary Jane
8. Revolution (single version)
9. Wah Wah
10. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
11. Happiness Is A Warm Gun
12. Flying
13. Hey Jude
14. You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
15. I Am The Walrus
16. Carnival Of Light
17. Long Long Long
18. The Inner Light
19. Revolution 9
20. Good Night
21. My Mummy's Dead

I agree, but I do like that final "AYE-OHH!" from Lennon that segues right into the piano intro of "WHile My Guitar Gently Weeps".

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), October 15th, 2004.

so true.

Not sure I understand the appeal of "Sexy Sadie".

It lasts for, what, a minute or something, doesn't it? As such, I don't think it fills a lot of space, so it cannot be considered "filler"

However, repeating "Number 9" a zillion times on top of various strange noises for 9 minutes is definitely filler...

It's a great goddamn track -- I always thought it sounded like a runaway fire engine -- all those ringing, siren like guitars. Like so much of this album, it retains a slightly off riff too....hinting indescribably at someting sinister.

hey, the fourth side of this record kind of sucks, don't it?

savoy truffle, revolution 9 & cry baby cry are all pretty good iirc.

also, i once knew a guy whose fave song on the white album was "wild honey pie"!!!! wtf??

"I Will" is a great song!

No one would ever talk about this album if it wasn't wildly uneven.

"i will" is on side two!

kind of wish they would've just released a three-sided record, with some picture etched into side four.

picky picky picky.

Revolution 1 is good

je suis pas d'accord

Still align myself with Ian MacDonald w.r.t "Revolution 9."

I love this record so much. It has to be the weirdest number one album ever.

Too great. I remember once thinking that Album 1 (sides 1 & 2) was boffo and Album 2 had all the filler (I'd just swap "Savoy Truffle" in for "Rocky Raccoon" and be happy) but I put it on the other day in consolation for not being able to source a mono box locally and ... wow! There's hardly a song I'd skip. I must have been going through an extreme popist phase or something.

I agree with above posters that it's a complete work of art - you can't really take it apart and even the sucky bits contribute to the whole. As well, the sequencing is, in the main, masterful. I find "Bungalow Bill" and "Wild Honey Pie" (among others) hard to defend on their own merits but they perform perfectly in their respective places.

I have to rep for "Don't Pass Me By" - it's a plodding, derivative (of Buck Owens, mainly) pedestrian piece of shit that somehow transcends: Ringo's everybloke vocals, Leslie speaker on everything in sight giving the whole track an underwater feeling, the queasy fiddle, and the weird, brassy quality that most of the instruments have... there's something unreconstructable about it; it has an otherworldly inevitability that the Beatles' music (and relatively speaking so little else) often musters. I give thumbs up.

Rocky Raccoon and Honey Pie still don't do it for me, even so.

i like "don't pass me by" as well.

I don't mind playing the album, but can honestly only get behind about five songs (Helter, Happiness, Everybody's, Glass Onion, Dear Prudence). And of those five, four were done better by someone else (counting Tick, Tick as a Glass Onion cover...).

ooh the other week i was wondering how i'd single-albumise this

xpost. Huh? Whose versions are better? Please don't say U2's Helter is better...please? Those 5 songs all kill as originals...oh this makes me sad.

I'm still trying to rank them, but it's just so damn mercenary. Even when I pull that cd off the shelf to hear Prudence or Helter, I have to play it through. So I guess I can't really argue til I can back myself up... harrumph.

i agree that the big sprawling messiness makes the album interesting, but as an exercise here are the songs i'd include in a short, to-the-point single album:

Back In The USSR
Dear Prudence
Martha My Dear
I'm So Tired
Birthday
I Will
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Blackbird
Julia
Rocky Racoon
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
Don't Pass Me By

haven't decided on mine beyond the fact that Dear Prudence and Happiness Is A Warm Gun are *definitely* in it

dear prudence is one of my very favorite beatles songs.

this record is such a mess, a wonderful mess. I don't listen to it often anymore.

same here! there is something quintessential about it. quintessentially of its time and yet timeless. that last 30 seconds is just *fuck yes*

xp

but i think 'happiness' is my favourite from the album. mostly for that syncopated bit.

amateurist!

xpost: better versions (this is also probably in another thread) are Helter Skelter (Husker Du), Happiness is a Warm Gun (Breeders), Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Feelies). And when I hear Glass Onion now, I'm always waiting for "the part that sounds like Tick, Tock."

i also prefer the boney m version of "julia" to the original.