The Beatles - Hey Jude

Super-duper Beatles geeks will understand why i say The White Album is the end of the band. It really was the last Beatles album. They hadn't actually been "a band" since Revolver. Harrison straight up said fuck touring, Lennon didn't like being a studio musician, Paul said seriously let's actually play together again, and Ringo showed up early every day because he was the only professional of the 4 at that point (it was his job, and he liked that job).

The last few years are a jumbled mess because Capitol wanted a mix of albums and compilations to distribute in america. I said this period ironically produced their best stuff, because they sucked at making albums. Their epic, iconic, best loved works are silly movie soundtracks, not Beatles albums. Lennon and McCartney were amazing songwriters, but they were flat out terrible at weaving a coherent narrative from their respective brain farts. That's why they smashed so many incomplete ideas together. When they went back to basics and just bashed their instruments in the same room for months on end, they wrote some amazing songs, figured out better versions of famous album tracks, and handed over the job of making it logical to someone else.

Let It Be, Abbey Road, and Hey Jude (that's the order in which they were created rather than published) contain the essence of what made the Beatles a great band. The concept behind all three was here's the amazing stuff these guys created but threw away while they were pretending to be superstars. That's a much better context to listen to them in, because you can't be disappointed. Oh, that's great! That song's great too! Oh, i forgot about that one! They aren't egomaniacs anymore; just 4 likable talented guys, like the old days. Obviously they're bigger egomaniacs that ever, but that's the illusion working it's magic the way it's supposed to.

The White Album sounds like they fell apart, but George Martin managed to salvage their image over the next two years. He probably didn't do it completely consciously, but he at least gave the audience what they would accept as the final chapter of their beloved band. People were sad when the Beatles broke up, but it's hard to argue that there was anything left for them to create as a group. It took reworking hundreds of songs to get the last 20 to be satisfying, and honestly who doesn't prefer the faster version of "Revolution" on Hey Jude over the original on The White Album?

Bottle says George Martin's compilation album Hey Jude is the best Beatles album and i suppose i see where he's coming from. "Christ, you know it ain't easy" is about as good a final send off as anything.

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