Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Agreed. I personally think Revolver already accomplished what Sgt. Pepper gets credited for, and I think it marked a larger step forward for the band. I think the Sgt. Pepper worship is the result of:

1. Backlash over that Jesus thing overshadowed Revolver's release in the U.S.
2. Hype built up over the Beatles disappearing into the studio for months
3. It basically made the "Summer Of Love" (a meme in and of itself) accessible and commercial

Sgt. Pepper's is a great Beatles album as a whole, but the main thing about it is that it came at the perfect moment. There's no other way putting it. Revolver, while the better album overall (especially for how cohesive it manages to be while going off in every direction at once), was plagued by bad timing, and it only really took off recently.

Combine that with the Summer of Love, how the entire point of The Beatles is a bridge between pop sensibilities and experimentalism, and that it's the first full departure of their early sound, and it's seen as a landmark for ages. It's only now that the trend is reversing and people are seeing Revolver as the better album.

>>74771785
Agreed.

>>74771713
>>74771785
But there's a lot of people, especially young people today, who say Sgt. Peppers is the best album without knowing/experiencing that context of its release timing. And yet they think it's the best. Is that just parroting old people, then?

there are more people who complain and whine about this being the greatest album of all time than there are people who actually think it is

>>74772754
Sure, but is there any other album like that?
I think that alone makes this album special/an anomaly. It's much easier for other albums to be dismissed out of hand when people say they are #1.

Because it's a really good album.

>>74772909
But so are many others.

I personally prefer Magical Mystery Tour, Revolver and the White Album over Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I can't explain the general preference for Sgt Pepper's to be quite honest.

Personally, i believe this album's main strength is it's ability to transcend what pop really was at the time, and it is an album that is well put together, with all the songs fitting together well.

Do we have to have this thread every fucking day? Just fucking google it and you'll get a billion responses as to why it's so widely revered.

It's basically this >>74773455 It almost singlehandedly established album oriented rock/pop as the dominant form of music consumption, which has remained more or less the same to this day. Yes clearly there were other acts doing this, I'm not trying to discredit Dylan, Zappa, The Beach Boys or even the previous Beatles efforts, but Pepper is what put this on the map in a clear way for the wide majority of people. Compared to the concept albums of today or even a few years after it seems quaint but you can find plenty first hand accounts from the time on how monumental it felt. Even something as simple as having all the lyrics printed on the back of the record was huge. People had never seen a pop act so committed to presenting a well thought out piece of art (again, that stays true even if it doesn't seem so fully realized by later standards).

Imagine if Taylor Swift was 5 times as popular as she was, and still released an album that legitimately pushed the boundaries of the form. It was unheard of, and it's still basically unheard of now. It's not my favorite Beatles album either but it by far had the largest cultural impact out of any of their albums, which is why it's so highly regarded.

>>74771596
First off Zappa had already done the concept album thing previous to Pepper.
But when you're looking at things from a reverse perspective you can't really get the idea of how things were before something comes along and changes everything. Pepper brought about a linear shift in the way everyone else did everything.
No one today really gives any credit to Clapton and Cream , because they can't really imagine how things were before.

>>74774461
>Pepper brought about a linear shift in the way everyone else did everything.
How, though? What am I supposed to hear in it that I hear in all (/many/most) the albums that followed it, but never in the albums before it? Or is it purely a workflow shift?