The Beatles

The Beatles' ninth studio album, also known as the "White Album", was released in November 1968. It features 30 songs, many of which were written during a Transcendental Meditation course in India and recorded with minimal studio production. The album covers a wide range of musical genres and is considered a postmodern work by some critics.

Its creation was marked by creative tensions and the presence of Yoko Ono, John Lennon's new partner, which ultimately contributed to the band's breakup. The "White Album" received positive reviews and topped charts in the UK and US, although no singles were released in either country. A remixed version of the album was released in 2018 to mark its 50th anniversary.

The Beatles' album features a wide range of musical styles, including rock and roll, blues, folk, country, reggae, avant-garde, hard rock, music hall, and psychedelic music. Many of the songs were written and first performed on acoustic guitar during the band's trip to India and some of these songs remained acoustic on the album and were recorded by only part of the group. The album is notable for its diverse genres and for consistently sticking to a single genre in each song, rather than mixing several genres as the band had done in the past. The album's producer, George Martin, initially suggested that the band reduce the number of songs and create a single album with their strongest work, but the band refused. Reflecting on the album later, George Harrison said that some tracks could have been released as B-sides or withheld, but John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr supported the idea of a double album to clear out the group's backlog of songs. McCartney defended the album as it was, saying "It was great. It sold. It's the bloody Beatles' White Album. Shut up!"

The Beatles' album received mostly positive reviews upon its release, with many critics praising its diverse musical styles and strong songwriting. Some reviewers found the album to be too long or lacking the adventurous quality of the band's previous releases, but others appreciated its fragmentary style. Some critics argued that the album was the group's best work yet, with Rolling Stone calling it "the history and synthesis of Western music" and The Observer describing it as "joyful music making" by the "greatest songwriters since Schubert." However, there were also negative reviews, with Time magazine saying that the album demonstrated the band's "worst tendencies" and lacked taste and purpose, and The New York Times' Nik Cohn calling it "boring beyond belief" and saying that over half of the songs were "profound mediocrities." Despite these criticisms, the album was ranked as the tenth best of the year in a critics' poll by Jazz & Pop magazine.