Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s lonely heart club band – 1967

[Roland Bru]

This Liverpudlian pop group of the 60’s finally broke through with this album, that cashed in on the Summer of Love from the London perspective (as the Summer of Love is basically San Francisco, June through October). Inexplicably, some great singles of the period (Penny lane / Strawberry fields forever, both nostalgic songs, the first happy, the second not so happy) were left off the album, another annoying commercial move. In a way the album has dated quite bad: Both the album preceding it (Revolver) and two of their later albums (White Album and Abbey Road) are better. It is however quite revolutionary, so judge it from a ’67 perspective and respect the serious efforts at being artsy without sacrificing such attributes as a catchy melody, fun lyrics (somewhere between ‘nonsense’ and ‘deep’) and nice instrumentation.