How’s this for generosity: Two LPs stuffed to maximum density with every possible conception of the Beatles, “important” social and personal statements and puerile gags and unstuck-in-time rock songs rubbing shoulders in crowded space, all of them scattered (splattered?) across the tracklist with minimal regard for cohesive flow (unless the “Blackbird”/”Piggies”/”Rocky Raccoon” triad passes for thematic consistency) as if George Martin haphazardly dumped the masters on the listening public to make sense of them ourselves. For a band on the verge of disintegration, the Beatles sure were productive in 1968. On the other hand, the personal and artistic tensions that were pulling the group apart yielded legendary songwriters working in parallel, each member freed up to follow his muse with minimal interference from his bandmates’ competing visions. That it still feels like a group effort is a testament to enduring chemistry and Pavlovian association; these voices together on the same record will always sound like the Beatles.

In hindsight, of course twin spine-tinglers “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” are preceded by some of the silliest Beatles songs ever. Of course the band’s loudest, most rabid moment (“Helter Skelter”) brushes up against its quietest and tamest (“Long Long Long”). Of course there are two seemingly unrelated versions of “Revolution” and “Honey Pie,” all four of them kind of ridiculous. It’s gospel. It was written. When you first encounter the White Album, though, before it becomes an inextricable part of your own personal canon, it’s easy to hear all the parts you don’t like and wonder at the carefully edited opus they might have pieced together. No matter how you like your Beatles, it’s possible to construct an album for the ages out of the material here — and indeed, one of the all-time Beatlemaniac pastimes is narrowing the White Album down to one disc. (If you would dare cut “Dear Prudence,” I don’t know if we can be friends.)

But that exercise, for all its geeked-out appeal, misses the point. It’s innately, perversely right that this unruly batch of songs would be this band’s self-titled release. If every individual human being contains worlds, the Beatles as a unit contained universes. There is no way to effectively encapsulate everything they accomplished but with such a rangy, slapdash set. As Paul put it in the TV special The Beatles Anthology, “It’s great. It sold. It’s the bloody Beatles White Album. Shut up.”