The Rewind Button is a group blogging project that I’m participating in. We’re taking on Rolling Stone‘s Top 40 albums of all time and writing our own reviews of them. There will be a new album and review each Thursday.

Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House explores the notion of individuality, namely the process of figuring out who you are so that you can become that person completely. Considered controversial at the time of its premier and publication, today the play is a dramatic classic.

The Beatles (a.k.a. “The White Album”) was slated to be named A Doll’s House after the Ibsen play. It’s a fitting title, because it too is representative of a group trying to figure out who they are and who they will become. (I wish they would have stayed with that title, because I love seeing works tethered to each other across genres and ages.)

Based on previous Rewind Button reviews, it’s no secret that I love The Beatles.  To paraphrase the character Bob Slydell from the movie Office Space: I’ll be honest with you, I love their music. I do. I’m a Beatles fan. For my money, I don’t know if it gets any better than when they sing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Because of its eclecticism, it’s the perfect primer for someone who has never heard The Beatles’ music. Put this album on at a party, and you’ll have at least one song that will appeal to individual listeners.

We’re back at that word: individual. This is the album that starts the group’s third act, the one that leads to their denouement. They’ve figured out that they don’t need each other to write great songs, they have the strength to be on their own without carrying the weight of a group name so entrenched in the collective mind of society, which can appear quite rigid and unforgiving.

Maybe not naming the album was for the best. A lack of artwork and proper name lends to the notion of new beginnings, a clean slate, a slam of the door on the past and the white light at the end of a tunnel.

Please visit these other blogs participating in The Rewind Button project: