Sonic Youth's seventh album sort of originated with a long-running band joke involving their claim to one day cover the Beatles' White Album in its entirety. Somehow this project morphed into a twisted beatbox/sampler experiment masquerading as a tribute to Madonna. The band even took Madonna's surname for their own, calling themselves Ciccone Youth. The first Ciccone Youth single, featuring SY's version of "Into The Groovey" and Mike Watt's cover of "Burnin' Up" was initially released in 1986. Ciccone Youth unveiled themselves again on the Master-Dik EP, and decided to round out an entire album in late '87/early '88. Supposedly the finished project was put on hold until after the release of Daydream Nation, to ensure that attention wouldn't be diverted from the more "serious" album effort. In any case, The Whitey Album is a weird and wild collection of sampled beats, fresh rhymes, 80s pop covers, and some really good tunes.