Revolution 50: The Beatles White Album Remixed

Last year, the 50th anniversary remix of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band gained considerable respect from critics and fans alike. Now we have the 50th anniversary remix of The Beatles, universally known as The White Album thanks to its ultra-minimalist artwork.

- David Mccooey

Before asking whether this remix achieves the same revelatory listening experience of its predecessor, it’s important to note a difference between the two albums. The original stereo mix of Sgt Pepper’s was long seen as inferior, mixed as it was when a mono mix was considered to be the definitive version of an album. By late 1968 that mindset had changed, and The White Album was the first Beatles album conceived primarily as a stereo album.

So is a remix even necessary? In certain genres of popular music, such as R & B, remixing is commonplace. In others, such as rock, it remains an ambiguous practice, especially when applied to classic albums—works which through reputation and repetition seem set in stone. For some fans, remixing a Beatles album is both artistically redundant and cynically commercial.

But remixing the Beatles is not new. Remixed Beatles songs can be heard on the album Let It Be, which was released in 1970, but started life as Get Back in 1969. When Get Back was shelved at the last minute, the session tapes were handed over to the producer Phil Spector — famous for his “wall of sound” aesthetic and currently serving a life sentence for murder — who “re-produced” the work in part by remixing a number of songs, infamously adding intrusive orchestral and choral parts in the process. Let it Be was subsequently reworked and remixed again, appearing (sans Spector’s additions) as Let it Be … Naked in 2003.