So here's the game:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically by "The White Album," they were really just a brand. Each member was working on their own songs, sometimes even recording all the parts (I'm looking at you Paul), but often just asking another band member to come in and play the guitar parts (for example).
It made for a less cohesive album than "Abbey Road" or "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," but it still made for a really great album (some people actually think it's the best).
The problem, as I see it, is that their solo work (post break-up) is just too much of one voice. So what if the Beatles never broke? What if they continued to work but in the fashion that produced "The Beatles" aka "The White Album?"
What would that look like? Below is a table that roughly groups their solo releases by year. Some years they produced multiple albums, and some years one of them didn't produce any albums. Your job is to listen to their studio albums and identify what songs you'd include on their What if? album. I broke it into 8 volumes. Some things to keep in mind:
- Of the 30 tracks on "The White Album," Ringo Starr wrote/sang on 1 and George Harrison wrote/sang on 4. That means that 25 of the tracks were Lennon/McCartney. Keep those proportions in mind when you start to create your Volumes?
- I also (on the table) split George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" into two different volumes since it was a double album.
- You should aim to create an "album" of 10-12 songs.
- There are three (?) solo releases that they produced before they broke up including Paul McCartney's first solo release that I am not including on this list. They hadn't broken up yet, though that may have contributed to their break up.
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