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Shortly after returning from India where he was learning the art of Trancendental Meditation with the other Beatles, Paul wrote "Blackbird" while at High Park Farm in Kintyre, Scotland in April of 1968. For such a delicate acoustic piece hidden away as the eleventh track on a double-album, a song that was never a charted hit, it has been said to have become one of the top ten most covered songs of all time. Then, from 2002 onward, “Blackbird” has become a fixture in his set lists, the song getting a rousing reception after every performance on every tour he's done since. Apart from “ Long Tall Sally,” it was one of the first Beatles songs that McCartney decided to perform live during his 1975/1976 “Wings Over The World” tour. What first appeared as a simple but impressive solo acoustic Paul track on the “ White Album” has ended up becoming one of the most popular signature pieces of his entire career. And Ringo turns in a delight with his first original, the lumbering country-carnival stomp "Don't Pass Me By." None of it sounds like it was meant to share album space together, but somehow The Beatles creates its own style and sound through its mess.If you are a Beatles fan and are a guitarist, as many are, and happen to have an acoustic guitar with you when with a group of friends, what do you think the likelihood is that someone will ask you to play "Blackbird"? I would think the liklihood is pretty damn high!

Harrison still had just two songs per LP, but it's clear from "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," the canned soul of "Savoy Truffle," the haunting "Long, Long, Long," and even the silly "Piggies" that he had developed into a songwriter who deserved wider exposure.

McCartney doesn't reach quite as far, yet his songs are stunning - the music hall romp "Honey Pie," the mock country of "Rocky Raccoon," the ska-inflected "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," and the proto-metal roar of "Helter Skelter." Clearly, the Beatles' two main songwriting forces were no longer on the same page, but neither were George and Ringo. Lennon turns in two of his best ballads with "Dear Prudence" and "Julia" scours the Abbey Road vaults for the musique concrète collage "Revolution 9" pours on the schmaltz for Ringo's closing number, "Good Night" celebrates the Beatles cult with "Glass Onion" and, with "Cry Baby Cry," rivals Syd Barrett. Never before had a rock record been so self-reflective, or so ironic the Beach Boys send-up "Back in the U.S.S.R." and the British blooze parody "Yer Blues" are delivered straight-faced, so it's never clear if these are affectionate tributes or wicked satires. This makes for a frustratingly scattershot record or a singularly gripping musical experience, depending on your view, but what makes the so-called White Album interesting is its mess. Each song on the sprawling double album The Beatles is an entity to itself, as the band touches on anything and everything it can.