Is "Revolution 9" by The Beatles their most visionary "song"?

[](https://www.youtube.com/@harvomail6622)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNdcFPjGsm8&list=RDSNdcFPjGsm8&start\_radio=1

"Revolution 9" by The Beatles is one of the most unique, odd, and polarizing tracks in their discography. I, like many people, used to hate it and always treated it as an easy skip when listening to The White Album. Recently, however, I have developed a newfound appreciation for it. I would now argue that "Revolution 9" is one of the most innovative and visionary pieces the band ever created. How can a track so universally disliked become a respected piece of art to an individual? And I am certainly not the only one who defends it.

I think of "Revolution 9" as less of a traditional song and more of an experience, acting as a sonic and atmospheric painting. Of course, music is subjective, and this perspective doesn't mean you have to enjoy it. I will be the first to admit that I don't listen to it the way I would a regular track. You can't just listen for melody, chords, or a standard beat. Instead, it is much closer to visual art. I would compare its ambient, atmospheric walls of sound to modern post-rock and electronic artists like Boards of Canada, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Aphex Twin.

A great conceptual parallel to this track is the album Everywhere at the End of Time by The Caretaker. This project refuses to be simplified into basic pop music. The album sonically mirrors the ongoing battle with dementia, charting the incremental degradation of a mind through fleeting memories and building confusion. As it progresses, the audio becomes hollow, fractured, and decayed. You don't casually say, "Hey, I want to listen to that dementia album." You sit with it as if you were staring at a painting.

To me, "Revolution 9" evokes a similar, heavy conceptual weight. It sounds like the auditory experience of suffering a traumatic brain injury, or perhaps the final moments of dying. It captures a consciousness becoming fragmented, overwhelmed, and completely detached from ordinary reality. You hear the fleeting final moments of life through distorting voices, repetitious loops, and abstract thoughts. It sounds like a mind fleeing from life, being forgotten, and degrading back to its primordial self. In my opinion, that makes it one of the most visionary "songs" in The Beatles' entire catalog.

No. The only thing revolutionary about it was that it was put on a Beatles album where it was heard by millions of casual pop music fans.

What do you think is their most visionary song?

Exactly. If you know mid-century musique concrète, electronic music, tape composition, and related avant-garde traditions, Revolution #9 is totally unsurprising…..

Other than the fact that it’s on a major album by the world’s biggest band at the time.

I don't agree at all. I think it's a bit of a pastiche of music concrete and modern experimental composition. This is maybe a bit harsh, but t's a bit like calling The Naked Gun a hard-boiled cop movie.

Tomorrow Never Knows is the one I'd nominate. It took those ideas from music concrete and tape music and put it into the context of a pop song.

I think it’s a good-to-great composition in the musique concrete tradition — a genre that had been around for over 10 years before the white album was released. I like it, and frankly I think it’s a linchpin of the white album (which is also argue might be their magnum opus), but it didn’t really break new ground artistically.

What it did do was expose the masses to some pretty heady avant-garde stuff. Tape loops. Noise as music. The “recording itself” as the composition. Hostile and disturbing sounds. Electronic manipulation.

Things like krautrock and Dark Side of the Moon may have looked different without Rev9. But then again, the psychedelic revolution was in full swing by November 1968, so who knows.

Did it have a lasting effect on popular music? Well, it’s a particular touchstone: sometimes pop musicians dabble in the avant-garde, and listeners have to deal with it or tune it out. And sometimes it’s actually very good if you tune in.

There was already a whole world of experimental composers, people experimenting with tape loops and musique concrète way before the Beatles. What was new with Revolution 9 was that it showed up on a huge mainstream rock album. So for a lot of listeners, that was their first exposure to something that avant-garde. I mean, imagine buying the White Album in 68 expecting stuff like Blackbird or While My Guitar Gently Weeps and then getting eight minutes of tape loops and jittery voice samples.

Within the lineage of musique concrete and sound collage, Revolution 9 is not particularly influential, inventive, or revolutionary. This kind of music had been around, more or less, for 20 years already by the time The Beatles did it. Revolution 9's main importance is due to the fact that it brought avant garde sound art to a mass audience.

Tomorrow Never Knows sounds like it's from the future still. It came out almost 60 years ago.

Tomorrow is a no brainer. First song they made for Revolver, set the tone for their future experimentation.

Sounds like it's from the future STILL, almost 60 years later.

Nah, I think Tomorrow Never Knows is much more visionary. It led to sampling, using the studio as an instrument, use of single-chord structures, vocal processing, even dance music with its heavy beat and pulsing bass

Revolution #9 was pretty similar to other musique concrète from the time, including one Paul McCartney had created called Carnival of Light, which is still lost to this day.

I wouldn’t say it was visionary, but it was a cool, experimental and brave departure.

it sounds like a pumped payola song from 1996 by chemical brothers with liam gallagher on vocals