"The Zeitgeist of That Year"

"The truth is that the music's air of unease was locked in from the start, and endured long after such grisly associations had faded into history. The White Album eventually became a touchstone for such talents as Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Smiths, Radiohead, Blur, and the US musician and producer Danger Mouse, all of whom drew on its sense of nothing ever being quite right. In 2004 the Scottish author Andrew O'Hagan wrote that the record had 'a social and psychological resonance that people are still conjuring with today', an observation that feels even truer 14 years on: its songs may have been quintessentially of their time, but what’s striking about being immersed in them again is how pointedly they speak to ours."

John Harris at The Guardian listens to The Beatles fifty years later.