I don't really mean that but I'm hoping it will get attention. But I do think that album is way overrated. Anyone agree? I think it gets too much attention based solely on it's production. The songs, in my opinion, are not up to the standards of Rubber Soul, Revolver, The Beatles or Abbey Road. I would rank it above Magical Mystery Tour, which I also think is relatively weak, but it is NOT their best album. Not even close. Lennon's songs were pretty weak and Within You Without You is too damn long. Never was a fan of those Indian inspired songs. (The Inner Light, For You To). It just kind of bugs me that it is routinely hailed as the greatest album of all time when it's not even the best Beatles album. What do y'all think?

My Beatle top five:

1 Rubber Soul
2 Revolver
3 Abbey Road
4 The Beatles
5 Help!

I disagree.. A Day In the Life is something that got me hooked on their music.. I cant explain in words what that songs means to me..


Its an excellent Beatle Album.

My Top Five

The White Album
Revolver
Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club
Magical Mystery Tour
Abbey Road

hmm Not in any paticular order, except White Album being number one above all.

From a purely composition-and-performance standpoint, it probably isn't their best. But, I imagine (being only in my early 30s) that back when it was released it represented a departure from the usual rock (or even Brit rock) album. A concept album by what was arguably the world's best rock band. The best songs on there are quite good, the lyrics are catchy. They have a lot of good hooks.


And, it was FUN!!!


Now, stop writing incendiary headlines!!!

ThreadBare said:

Really man, u dont have to put something that is the total opposite of ure concept to get someone's attention.

Sdldawn said:

No Rubber Soul? I really love that one. I think it was George who said they were like pt. 1 and 2 (referring to Rubber Soul and Revolver). I should have mentioned that I am not a fan of the Beatles' psychedlic music. Personally, I think the songwriting really suffered when they tried to go psychedelic.

ThreadBare said:

Sorry about the headline. I was being an attention whore.

Someone I know once described this album as sounding like "children's music"....I understand what they meant.

I would never state that Sgt. Peppers is "garbage" or "overrated"!
It is essential listening (not just from a Beatles perspective but a non-classical music perspective).

*running a mirror along album cover to reveal Paul-Is-Dead clues...*

i agree with u, i havent listened 2 Sgt Pepper in a year and some months now. Revolver is their best effort.

Sgt Peppers is a fantastic album. It's not their best (despite its constant no.1 rating in all those critics' lists) but it's still top drawer.

I've never been as convinced by Revolver as some. I think Abbey Road, The Beatles and Rubber Soul all kick its ass.

rialb said:

"Sgt Peppers" is the most overrated album ever. Its great songs "A Day in The Life", "With A Little Help From My Friends" and "She's Leaving Home" are swamped by utter crap like "Good Morning", "When I'm 64" and George Harrison's sitar tune-up wank noodle. How so much music hall-vaudeville dreck (McCartney's speciality) ever got called "groundbreaking" is beyond me, and quite why it remains the Sistine Chapel of "rock" albums is truly baffling. That's like saying John Denver was fucking Stockhausen!

I still like most of Sgt. Pepper. I also don't think it's the best Beatles album but it would still end up in my top 5 along with Revolver, The Beatles (White Album), Abbey Road & Rubber Soul.

Fave tracks:

With A Little Help From My Friends
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Getting Better
Within You Without You
Lovely Rita
A Day In The Life.


Did you know that in the UK Sgt. Pepper spent 27 weeks at no.1 while the White Album only managed 22 weeks on the chart.

Sdldawn said:

Hey, it got my attention pretty quick. I might not have clicked on it so soon if it was a positive headline. I clicked on it to sit back and watch the shit fly.

I like Sgt. Pepper, although it's not my favorite by a long shot.

i agree with him... this is probably the shittiest beatles album and i've never understoood why people love it so much... i dig the title track, "she's leaving home" "within you without you" and that's all... i can't stand any of the other songs on it...

Some 35+ years later it may be hard to understand this albums importance,but at the time ,"singles (45s)" were the norm and albums were basically collections of singles.I cant be sure, but I believe it was one of the first albums designed to be an "album"(LP) expirience...
making it a bit of a "breakthru" as far as critics and record buyers were concerned...


I know many bands of the time were VERY influenced by it...

I may be the only one here that ran out and bought Sgt. Pepper's the moment it was released. I have since listened to it countless times, and in virtually every state of altered consciousness possible.

Simply put, Sgt. Pepper's set the standard for all, yes all, pop music that would follow. Importantly, it was based on a concept (a band within a band) that was expressed as the blending of genres and the flow of the whole album from one song to the next. Add in the total control by the musicians, the studio experimentation, and the reliance on their own life's experience as source material (yes, Paul's cheesy dancehall stuff, George's druggy Indian stuff, John's writing a song based on a random moment in his life - Mr. Kite, and so on) and pop music was not destined to be the same after this album was released.

Sure, everyone has their favorite songs from the Beatles or any other prolific source of music (and as Prince fans we rarely agree on this point), but the songs are part of the whole and once you dissect it, the whole falls apart.

Between iPods and downloads and burning CD's, we are diminishing an important part of the creative process of pop music artists - the evolution of their thoughts and their development into music as reflected in the interweaving of the songs on their released work, with each album being a snapshot in time.

jackflash said:

And then there are Beach Boys fans who would tell you that it was Pet Sounds that influenced Sgt. Pepper, and simply because of that it deserves the status that Sgt. Pepper attained.

I realize why the album holds the esteem it does, I just think that arrangement/song-wise it's so of its time that it doesn't age as well as some of the other Beatles' albums. Personally, side 2 of Abbey Road is something I could forever listen to, and would be one of the albums I'd grab from a burning house long before Sgt. Pepper. I guess I just think it's ironic that this is the album that set the ALBUM/CONCEPT standard, yet at the same time, it hasn't aged as well as some other Beatles albums.

MrTation said:

Ur, no, "Sgt Peppers" wasn't "one of the first albums designed to be an "album" (LP) expirience (sic)", Frank Sinatra's "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning". Frank Sinatra is generally credited with having recognised the potential of the then new Long Player (LP) format and exploited it accordingly with a suite of thematically linked songs (i.e: a "concept album"). That was in 1955.

Supernova said:

The Beatles said they were influenced by it also.

Sdldawn said:

I know.

Supernova said:

Paul McCartney has always spoken of the implicit competition between the Beatles and the Beach Boys (actually, between himself and Brian Wilson). One anecdote is that soon after Pet Sounds was released (1966), Paul was at a party in the US. He sat down at a piano and previewed "She's Leaving Home" for Brian Wilson and the other guests. As they picked their chins off the floor, Paul knew that the Beatles had it in them to blow everyone away with their next album (Sgt. Pepper - 1967).

I still listen to Pet Sounds and Sgt Peppers with some regularity. While Pet Sounds is beautiful and the influence on the Beatles is there, the Beatles paint with a palette of many more colors than the Beach Boys. Also, the Beatles were a band of multiple accomplished musicians, while the Beach Boys were basically Brian Wilson and some OK, but replaceable, others.

Abbey Road is great but aside from a 15 min medley, it's not really a "concept" album (so to compare the two is like, uh, comparing Dirty Mind and Lovesexy, perhaps).

Thanks for the Sinatra tip; I'm gonna look into it.

jackflash said:

That's v interesting.

I remember reading a quote from, i think, George Martin (and i think it was in the Beatles anthology book), where just Paul and George M were sitting together as George played 'God only knows' to Paul for the first time.

Apparently Paul sat silently through it and then said, "I can't compete with that" (or something along those lines - i'll dig the quote out tonight). But then that it inspired him and the others further when recording...

rialb said:

I'm sorry you don't like it, but if I may, I'd like to put the album into perspective. When it was released in 1967, the Beatles had just lost their place as the #1 band in America to a 7 man band by the name of "The Association" (Cherish, Never My Love, Along Comes Mary, Windy, Requiem for the Masses, etc.). Sgt. Peppers...was a radical departure from the Beatles' previous work and experimented with sounds that opened up a lot of people to different kinds of music. It broke boundaries which made it easier for fellow artists to experiment on their albums. I think Sgt. Peppers is held in such high regard because it was unlike anything else on the radio at the time. Music was basically 3 minute pop tunes that followed a strict formula...kind of dull. It was Sgt. Peppers... that pulled music out of the short lived rut of the mid-sixty's cookie-cutter pop song.

This is just my observation though. Let me know if you disagree. Interesting topic!

jackflash said:

I never said Pet Sounds was a better album than Sgt. Pepper, or anything intimating that. Not only am I NOT a Beach Boys fan, I can't stand their soulless music.


I also never said Abbey Road was a concept album.

I don't know where all that's coming from.

`
[This message was edited Wed Mar 31 22:22:47 2004 by Supernova]

CinisterCee said:

NO HE RIGHT!

PURPLE RAIN AND ZOSO SUCK TOO!

THRILLER GO AWAY YOU SUCK!

Shapeshifter said:

I could be wrong here but aside from the Sinatra album weren't there many albums by British artists that didn't have singles? The Beatles' own Rubber Soul didn't have any singles on it, at least in the U.K. And, I believe the first two Rolling Stones albums had no singles. (Again I am referring to the U.K. versions) Some of the albums I mentioned may have had U.S. singles but that wasn't the intention when they were made. For example Yesterday was not a single in the U.K., it was just an album track, but it was a massive hit in the U.S.

Greg55403 said:

I get what you are saying but there were other "arty" pop records before Sgt. Pepper. The Mothers of Invention's Freak Out! is much more experimental than Sgt. Pepper, in my opinion. The Velvet Underground's first album was recorded before Sgt. Pepper's although it was released after. That was another very experimental album. My point was that the songs themselves are not really that great. That is an area where I think the album fails in comparison to some of their other stuff. Someone else pointed out that it is very dated which I don't think is the case with Rubber Soul, Revolver, The Beatles or Abbey Road. And I think an album that is widely hailed as the best album of all time should be filled with great songs.

Saying that Sgt. Pepper's is garbage is a way to make people think that you're totally retarded. However, I do agree with the others that it's not their best album. My top five would be a little like this:

1. Revolver
2. Abbey Rd.
3. The White Album
4. Rubber Soul
5. Let it Be

I know that Rubber Soul was inspired by Dylan and that Sgt. Pepper was inspired by Pet Sounds. A Day in the Life is a fucking masterpiece. Lennon was the genius of the group, at least lyrically. If you don't believe me recite the lyrics to McCartney's 'Let 'em In.'

Maybe I should have started another thread for this but what do you guys think of the Beatles' psychedelic music in general? Personally, it is my least favourite period. To me a lot of it was just very self indulgent. Of course they were too good to make bad records but I think much of the psychedelic music they made is overrated. Parts of Magical Mystery Tour (Flying, Blue Jay Way, Your Mother Should Know) are, in my opinion, very uninspired.