when i get to the bottom i go back to the top of the WHITE ALBUM POLL

or prefer the speed-era Beatles, rather.

looking at this list, what amazes me most is how many songs i don't want to vote for. i voted for "i will."

Long Long Long.

For some reason I always thought it was a Lennon song. When I found it was George, I had Harrison-fever for weeks and listened to All Things Must Pass every night.

After going through the list and thinking about how much I love all these songs, I went with Revolution #9. It is such a tense, creepy record, and then it just goes to a whole other level of weirdness. Love it or hate it, it is a pretty singular experience. Or maybe I just like the memory of spinning it backward on my first turntable...turn me on, dead man...

Blackbird is the song I play on guitar to impress girls (it's one of the only non-strummy songs I can play)

heh i think it was the first non-strummy song i learned.
i went with long, long, long too, i love almost every minute of the album but time kinda stops when lll comes up. george was an alright dude.

I think I will be the only one voting for "Good Night". A very touching vocal, and it sounds like a soundtrack to some classic Hollywood movie. It feels like the least Beatlesy song there is, which is not why I like it so much, but it really speaks to their versatility. Also Ringo is my fav dude.

Second choice is helta skelta cos it cranks hard.

I might be the only one to vote for "Glass Onion."

"Blackbird"

Tim Ellison must be on vacation.

It is tough to decide. "Back in the USSR" was my favorite as a kid, and I still like it, especially the part with the Beach Boys satire. "Dear Prudence" is the one that sticks in my head. "Happiness is a warm gun" has a nice episodic quality, with three distinct parts. "Julia" is gorgeous. But I'm going to have to go with "While My Guitar..". It seems deeper than the rest, and I'm always compelled to listen closely whenever I hear it.

Another possible title:

c'mon, c'mon! c'mon, c'mon! Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My WHITE ALBUM POLL!!!

GOOD NIGHT.

and people who say it's "treacly" and the like? go and watch HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER or something.

"Yer Blues" is rubbish. There are so many crap songs on this album, I hardly know where to start!

where's Geir?

I voted for Sexy Sadie because among many strange, evocative songs, I feel its pull a little more than any other, today at least.

Long Long Long was also in my mind.

Then I realised I should really have voted for Revolution #9.

Ah well, I hope others will.

Well, I did.

It's strange, and you can say oh look at the contrarian..

But it still has that sense of 'theatre' about how Cry Baby Cry finishes (a good second place, possibly), and the "can you take me back" fades in, along with the "wine" chat, and suddenly into the dislocation of it all.

Destroy: Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Back in the U.S.S.R, Helter Skelter, Birthday, Why Don't We Do It in the Road?

Sublime: Glass Onion, Julia, Martha My Dear, Blackbird, Happiness Is a Warm Gun.

Think my vote will have to go to Julia.

Revolution #9's good too, but doesn't give me the chills.

Long Long Long

Crazy tough, but I'm going with "Helter Skelter."

Runner up: "Martha My Dear" (lovely, silly song)

"Revolution #9" still gives me the creeps.

Ooh -- "Glass Onion" -- huge fave as well.

It gives me the creeps, the chills, the sense of theatre, the sense of reaching for the stars. Fragments of it often run through my mind.

x-post

Everybody's Got Something To Hide... is the secret best track. Those cow-bells(?) at the start, then big screamy vocals for a bit, and then "everybody's got something TO HIIIIDE 'cept for me and my WAH-WAH-WAH-WA-AH-WAH-WAH!"

"Mother Nature's Son" for the "Find me in my field of grass" lyric.

julia. the most beautiful love song in the world.

The opening line and that circular rhythm. That's all Julia is, to me, and it's perfect.

Sexy Sadie. If it was an animal it would be a spider. Also considered: Happiness is a Warm Gun (snake), Cry Baby Cry (stray dog) or Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey (monkey).

I predict no votes for Birthday (goldfish), Piggies (slug) and Don't Pass Me By (labrador). The rest could all get some, though I can't see much reason to vote for Glass Onion (siamese cat) or While My Guitar Gently Weeps (block of granite).

"Birthday" is fine, as is "Glass Onion"

"Piggies" is shit tho. "Don't Pass Me By" worse.

i like "don't pass me by." a truly wacky recording, but it's got the bones of a good countryish rock song.

The barest of bones

"Piggies" is great!!!

I've always fucking hated "Rocky Racoon." After recording that, Paul SHOULD'VE been dead.

Ugh, that was weak.

I like "Rocky Racoon"!

Snap vote for Sexy Sadie.

"Glass Onion" - garbage.

I voted "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" which is one of maybe six songs I even like on this album

I went with "I'm So Tired". That "I wonder should I call you..." part.

This is pretty goofy, but when I was a teenager making the 90-minute trip between my two parents' houses, I'd sing the White Album to myself out of boredom. I got pretty good with the timing though "Revolution #9" was tricky.

I'll also give credit to Paul for being dominant on Revolver or even Abbey Road, but The Beatles was the one album where Lennon won hands-down. McCartney seems to have started hinting at his Wings schmaltz right around this time.

(I like the schmaltz. It just doesn't compare to "Happiness is a Warm Gun".)

There's some real rubbish from Lennon on this album though

My friends and I once issued a design challenge, in which we made journal designs to represent each song on this album. Oh, I wish I had it accessible to show you guys 'cause it was awesome! At any rate - I'm going for Rocky Raccoon, coincidentally my best design.

Haha - I bet your dad loved the gibberings from the back seat: "the wah-tusi, the twist ... el dorado"

not much of a Beatles guy so I voted "Dear Prudence" cause the Siouxsie cover of that song is just impeccable, one of the best cover versions I've personally heard. so i like the song for that reason, really.

Any hear the White Album outtakes/alternate versions on Anthology 3? I think a few of them are much better than the album versions: Helter Skelter, for one, is like this drugged-out, sparse but real SLOW and heavy jam with some great riffing and vocals; both Sexy Sadie and Cry Baby Cry are much sparser and Lennon opens up his voice a bit more; plus it's got McCartney's "Junk" which would've worked so well on the White Album (rather than the McCartney album), George's Not Guilty, and I'd even take the acoustic version of While My Guitar over the Clapton one.

Part of why I love the White Album is how stripped down it is, and some of these outtakes are even more so. I love love love the White Album and usually name it as my favorite Beatles album, but there is some crap on there as well as (what I think) are the lesser versions of some songs.

It doesn't help too that when I was getting into the Beatles (way back when I was what, 14?, man there's not much like getting into the Beatles and hearing all these songs for the first time), I had heard the Anthology 3 stuff before the album versions. Most of the album versions are obviously better, but there are a few (like the ones I mentioned) that I like a lot more.

People who don't get goofy smiles on their faces when O-bla-di comes on have hearts of ice and should stay away from children.

That said, I voted for Happiness is a Warm Gun Mama.

"Dear Prudence" is the best song on the best Beatles album. Also, I second the love for "Martha" upthread.

Lennon roolz this album.

Easy. "Dear Prudence"

Wish I could vote for two songs, one per LP. "Dear Prudence" is my actual favourite but I'm "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is close; and I'm voting for that purely to piss off the easily-offpissed.

"Revo 9" I quite like but wouldv'e liked more if it were tightened up by a minute or so. (Either that or stretched out to 12+ minutes with some Yoko-screeches for flavour.)

The most rubbish Lennon song (what, "Cry Baby Cry"?) is 5x better than the most rubbish Harrison or McCartney song on this album.

To me, this album's the object lesson in why most double albums should be pared down to singles (and my snide side says that most people who venerate the whole thing do so with the circular reasoning of liking the Beatles first, the music second).

USSR's my favorite right now (and since I knew people'd vote up Skelter and Yer Blues), so I'm voting for it despite it not being the "best."

the daffy hugeness of it creates all these little nooks for things like "savoy truffle" and "mother nature's son" to hide in. i'd hate to lose its rambly-ness.

Some artist dude set up the album art. I don't think it was The Beatles' idea.

But yeah, pop-art and abstract both equally fit for this record IMO.

plus idk, with all the tension in the band the absence of artwork feels like a fuck you, and the way the album is just a huge melange of song styles is kind of a fuck you too

from wikipedia

The album's sleeve was designed by Richard Hamilton, a notable pop artist who had organised a Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Tate Gallery the previous year. Hamilton's design was in stark contrast to Peter Blake's vivid cover art for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and consisted of a plain white sleeve. The band's name was discreetly embossed slightly below the middle of the album's right side, and the cover also featured a unique stamped serial number, "to create," in Hamilton's words, "the ironic situation of a numbered edition of something like five million copies."[citation needed

Interesting. I forgot about the serial numbers.

Woah, never knew it was Richard Hamilton! I really only know him by the 50s collage stuff (''What Is It That Makes Today's Homes'' etc etc), so I don't know how this fits into his work but it's interesting since he would also have been known for kind of a four-color pop-culture maximalism, not dissimilar from the Pepper cover.

I think the cover works well for the reasons Treeship gives. If I had to give it another cover it'd probably be something like Revolver: four separate personalities, airy and bright from a distance but crowded and weird and bashing-into-each-other up close.

yeah Hamilton's work doesn't really hint at the austerity of the White album cover --- which kind of impresses me, that he could serve the needs of the project so perfectly by coming up with something that was not only anathema to what the band had been known for, but also kind of anathema to what he was artistically known for

it's so cool

I changed my mind. The cover's alright.

speaking of covers, just saw the cover for this thing -- kind of terrible?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61-AXldtQDL._SL1500_.jpg

oh yuk

it looks like a SingStar box

'Revolution #9' took this? Oh, ILX.

wow that really does look terrible

it's really annoying me

it wasn't my fault, i voted for julia...

Hamilton's work doesn't really hint at the austerity of the White album cover

He did the poster also.

Only on ILM could Revolution 9 win. It's ridiculous and brilliant at the same time,

i like it but i think it's insane that anything beat long, long, long.

i'd like to note for the record that my vote, for "i will," was wrong.

i still think it's a great song, though.

it seems I did not vote? sb me

xp that's not a bad vote at all. i thought for a second this was the "worst song" thread and was momentarily scandalized.