Released: 1967
Tracks: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; With a Little Help From My Friends; Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds; Getting Better; Fixing a Hole; She’s Leaving Home; Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!; Within You Without You; When I’m Sixty-Four; Lovely Rita; Good Morning Good Morning; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise); A Day in the Life
Best track: Within You Without You
Track to skip: absolutely none
I love love LOVE listening to this album all the way through! Man, talk about something that just makes me smile. I’m sure there are people in the world who don’t care about the Beatles and don’t see why this album is such a big deal. That’s their loss. For me, this album just makes me feel incredible. Every song on here obviously deserves to be here and every song has something to offer. This is my absolute favorite Beatles album, as cliché as it is to say so. And that’s not taking anything away from Revolver or Abbey Road or the White Album, but Pepper just IS the essence of ‘The Beatles’.
This was the first Beatles album I got, and thus the first Beatles album I ever heard in entirety. My parents don’t own any Beatles records so I didn’t grow up listening to them like a lot of people my age did. My friend Bryan made me a couple of compilation tapes and that was what hooked me. I believe I got this as a Christmas present. I was familiar with a few of the songs (Sgt. Peppers, Lucy, With a Little Help), but I wasn’t prepared for the album as a whole. The song in particular that knocked me out (and still does) was Harrison’s Within You Without You. I don’t recall ever hearing any Indian music growing up, so when I first heard this song I was blown away. I thought it was THE weirdest thing I’d ever heard. I played it for all my friends because I couldn’t believe how strange it was. It sounds silly now, but when those special and new things first come into your life, it’s so amazing. The song STILL amazes me. He was, what, 24 when he wrote that? It fries my brain how people, kids younger than I am now, can write such amazing songs like Within You Without You or In My Life or A Day in the Life. Every time I listen to Within You I get something new out of it. It’s a monumental work.
I’m still awed by the production of this. This album is over 30 years old and yet most albums these days can’t compete with this on a production level. To me, the REAL ‘5th Beatle’ was George Martin. He contributed musically to the group in immeasurable ways. His production on all the albums is inspiring, but on Pepper he surpassed everything. He is so talented. That’s not slight the other 4 guys who happen to play on here either; they’re not too bad themselves. Up to this point, this was by far the best these 4 played on record. It’s the little things that they do that are so great. I’m so happy the Beatles stopped touring in 1966 so they could focus their efforts on making the best album they could make. They did, that’s for sure.
Rating: 96
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