Top Pick: The Beatles | The Beatles (White Album) 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition
“It was great. It sold. It’s the bloody Beatles’ White Album. Shut up!” So said Paul McCartney when someone suggested The Beatles’ self-titled magnum opus should have been a single LP.
On the one hand, he’s absolutely right — The White Album, as it’s become known, is one of rock ’n’ roll’s classic double albums. It boasts a ton of hits: Back in the U.S.S.R., Dear Prudence, Glass Onion, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Happiness is a Warm Gun — and that’s just Side 1. Add Blackbird, Birthday, Helter Skelter and Revolution 1 to that list and Macca’s stance speaks for itself.
But on the other hand — and sorry, Sir Paul — there’s also no denying The White Album has its share of filler (be honest, how often do you listen to Revolution 9 or some of the shorter deep-album cuts?). So maybe the ideal length is somewhere in the middle — for my money, I have long believed The White Album would have been a great three-sided record.
But whatever. It’s a moot point. That was then and this is now. The White Album isn’t getting any shorter. In fact, as every Beatlemaniac this side of the Mersey knows, it’s getting longer. A lot longer. This week marks the arrival of the massive White Album 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition, a seven-disc behemoth that includes the original album respectfully refurbished and subtly remixed by Giles (son of original producer and fifth Beatle George) Martin; a disc of acoustic demos cut at George Harrison‘s house; three discs of rehearsals, outtakes, alternate versions and jams from the Abbey Road Studios recording sessions; and a 5.1 audio DVD.
Who has time to listen to all that? Well, I do. And to save you some time, I put together a list of 27 previously unreleased cuts that stand out from the pack. Check it out here or listen to it below.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS (in alphabetical order)
• The Band | Music From Big Pink: 50th Anniversary Edition
• Big Brother & The Holding Co. | Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills
• David Bowie | Loving the Alien (1983–1988)
• Miles Davis & John Coltrane | The Final Tour: Bootleg Series, Vol. 6
• Bob Dylan | More Blood, More Tracks
• Bobbie Gentry | Girl From Chickasaw County | Complete Capitol Masters
• Guns N’ Roses | Appetite For Destruction Deluxe
• Nick Mason | Unattended Luggage
• Tom Petty | An American Treasure
• Prince | Anthology 1995-2010
• Ramones | Road to Ruin Deluxe
• R.E.M. | R.E.M. at the BBC
• Joe Strummer | Strummer 001
• Various Artists | Try a Little Sunshine: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1969
** NOTE: Because Tinnitist has only been around since mid-September, this list features albums released and reviewed since then — along with whatever else I heard and remembered from the rest of the year. If you can’t find a review by clicking on the entry or searching the site — or you spot an obvious oversight in this list — the album you’re looking for probably came out too early for me to review it. Or I just didn’t have time. Either way, my bad.
