Anniversary poll: How many good songs are there on Sgt. Pepper's?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

averages to 8.444444444444 good songs

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2017/06/sgt-pepper-50

Here Comes The Sun has been streamed almost as much as the entire Sgt. Pepper album.

hi, George!

Love the SY version of WYWY; all the better that it's Ranaldo-led

averages to 8.444444444444 good songs

― sexualing healing (crüt)

yeah but what if you do a bayesian analysis on it

Sgt Pepper's is better than Abbey Road. In the past, I didn't understand that.

Revolver is equally good. The White Album is behind Abbey Road.

Here Comes the Sun sucks

no

So then ...

13	28
Hate "Within You Without You"	14
Have critical thinking skills	75

White Album
Abbey Road
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper

In that order

I skip Leaving Home / Mr Kite / Within You every time I play this album. Home and Within are too slow and draggy, and Mr Kite is psychedelia in search of a melody.

― LimbsKing, Thursday, June 1, 2017 3:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is the bit when the album gets good, son, WTF?

A1 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Useless, but sometimes I force myself to sit through it as a patience exercise
A2 With A Little Help From My Friends - Can't separate it from the hoary old Joe Cocker version I heard when I was really young and didn't like very much. Come to appreciate some of the lyrics (What do you see when you turn out the light etc) and Ringo is a sweetheart
A3 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - Pfffff just so bored of this
A4 Getting Better - Does for the album what it says on the tin. Everything up to this point has been a bit 'classic rock' or something. This isn't exactly mindblowing but I like the tune at least
A5 Fixing A Hole - Yes this is good classic McCartney stuff. I like the fact Lennon was in approval of the pseudo-psychological nature of the lyric
A6 She's Leaving Home - Had to study the lyrics of this in A-level English for some reason. Weirdly, that hasn't put me off it. Great work, but kind of a retread of Eleanor Rigby and not as catchy
A7 Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite! - I'm a sucker for fey psychedelic whimsy and this delivers it in spades. Great instrumentation, inventive lyrics. The 'eye-of-the-duck' of this album
B1 Within You Without You - Another retread. It's good but I prefer Love You To.
B2 When I'm Sixty-Four - See BFTBOMK! Lots of people hate the Beatles' silly novelty-psych songs but I think that's their best work and worth a million Back In The USSRs. Lovely instrumentation again. I like woodwind
B3 Lovely Rita - Doesn't really work well with me melodically speaking. The whole thing come off as awkward. The lyrics jar with the metre (pun not intended)... It's not awful, but reminds me of Doctor Robert in that it's a character song where every element feels like a square peg in a round hole.
B4 Good Morning Good Morning - Tempted to say the same about this as Lovely Rita, but it's grown on me especially in this new mix. Also, LOL animals
B5 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) - At least it's better than the full version
B6 A Day In The Life - You know that meme on Facebook that goes through the different stages of brain activity? This is the last one. If it weren't for this, the album would probably be seen as a dud

Had to study the lyrics of this in A-level English for some reason.

So did I, hated the lyrics ever since, tune is quite nice in a sort of Peter Skellern/ Gilbert O'Sullivan way.

If you think that either She's Leaving Home or Within You Without You are retreads then you just aren't listening to anything other than the instrumentation.

lol we had She's Leaving Home in English class too - makes no sense, the lyrics are so on the nose

xp I've always felt that Revolver and Sgt Peppers kind of mirror each other in terms of style/structure and of course there are superficial similarities between the two. These songs share instrumentation and lyrical content, but clearly they're the product of each members' obsession of the time: George's interest in Indian philosophy and metaphysics; McCartney doing the orchestral arrangements and kitchen-sink narratives. Of course they're all good in their own rights but I just prefer the Revolver analogues.

I think it was Southy who admonished me on a prior thread for saying this before and I get that. He pointed out that Sgt Peppers is a huge step up in terms of musical ambition compared to Revolver, which is true, but I prefer it as an album overall and think the step-up in terms of songwriting and concepts between Rubber Soul and Revolver are much more noticeable than between Revolver and Peppers.

I'm old enough to remember (in fact, getting) the albums from "Hard Days Night" to "Sgt Pepper" - We were living out in Germany as my dad was in the RAF, and some of them were on the "Odeon" label, would be worth a fortune of they were "NM" but then why would they be?

.. Except for "Rubber Soul", must have been moving home about then....

Anyway, I believe RS belongs with R and SP, it sounds like how those albums would have been before the "Massed Alberts" as John put it.

Rubber Soul is maybe the album I'm most likely to listen to most these days. It's just got its own special vibe ya know?

Last one I played was side 1 of Abbey Road - I got one of those DeAgostini cheap(er) ones.

If the newsagents are still doing them, I might get the "Love" one, but.

Revolver and Sgt Pepper have a similar sort of feel to me, very shiny and peppy and NOW - I mean I realise I might just be buying into some swinging '60s mythologising bullshit here but both records sound like the work of people full of energy and ideas and tuned in with what's going on around them. I love Rubber Soul too but to me it feels a lot cosier, more insular.

I can't really separate the songs on these albums from their packaging/cover art, hence RS sounds woozy to me, Revolver pointed & arty, SP kaleidoscopic. I might feel differently if I'd first heard these tunes on one long playlist or something.

Revolver > Rubber Soul > White Album > Sgt Pepper > MMT > Abbey Road > Beatles for Sale > Help! > Hard Day's Night > Please Please Me > Let it Be > With the Beatles

A Hard Day's Night is a top five album at least.

I used to agree, but I appreciate Beatles for Sale and Help more these days.

Abbey Road > Help > everything else

revolver -> rubber soul -> mmt -> white album -> abby road -> pepper

somewhere I remember seeing rubber soul describes as a 'smoke and wood' album and that's always stuck with me. maybe the US version more than the UK version. It's their folk record, heavily pot-laced, as evidenced by the distorted cover photo.

I read that too and that's how think of it.

Agreed. My first introduction to RS was a US vinyl copy my dad had. Kicking off that album w/I've Just Seen A Face always felt more appropriate than Drive My Car.

I voted 13 but

lol we had She's Leaving Home in English class too - makes no sense, the lyrics are so on the nose

Not only do I find them on the nose but the conclusion always seemed a bit odd to me, even as a kid. 'Fun' is the one thing that money can't buy?

haha yeah

Love costs a few bucks iirc

Abbey Road is by far the worst Beatles album

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I can't explain the inclusion of "She's Leaving Home" as an English-class text, unless you're otherwise starved for examples of point of view. Wow it's almost like one singer is speaking from the perspective of the girl and the other singer is speaking from the perspective of the parents? MIND. BLOWN.

Perhaps it's one of those weird cultural warmed-over things? I.e., where stuff for people born in the 70s/80s is just lazily recycled materials originally created/intended for people born in the 50s/60s, without much alteration?

Like someone once thought "Hey, I know what the young kids dig! Those Beatle chaps! Let's teach it as literatoor!" and no one revised the curriculum for decades because it was easier not to? Or, perhaps, Beatlemania-aged teachers thinking the music of THEIR yoot was a good way to reach yoots.

In circa 1976 remember having a big joke book where lots of jokes still somehow depended heavily on "parents of teenagers be like 'what is up with the fascination with the Beatles.'" Seemed quaint at the time but I figured joke book writers were probably old dudes who were mostly recycling Henny Youngman gags.

these stories just remind me of that scene in Wiseman's High School where the class is discussing S&G's "Dangling Conversation" (which is also on the nose and does not really require any in-depth analysis)

(I didn't actually have to read it in class myself, tbc, btw. Was just commenting on the lyrics. We did have some Joni Mitchell and Burton Cummings in my middle school English textbook iirc.)

God I h8 Dangling Conversation (despite overall S&G love).

Tangentially I loathed every single second I spent in school where the teacher generously allowed the students to bring in their favorite song and allowed the class discuss its significance. Or when they tried to show they were "hep" and "connect with the youngsters" by explicating a pop song. YEAH WE GET THE IDEA and btw IT DOESN'T WORK.

Let us review the track record of English classes solemnly discussing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or doing - get this - a rap version of Hamlet. How many school-haters have been converted into school-lovers by these ham-handed efforts? (calculates feverishly) Oh, right, zero. The Lin-Manuel Miranda SNL ep had a skit on this.

Will stand by my Grade 12 comparison of Sonic Youth's "Shadow of a Doubt" to Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".

Yes, surely every schoolkid everywhere cringes when a teacher does this. I did. In retrospect though, this guy was a good teacher and I was a snotty little twerp.

that scene in Wiseman's High School where the class is discussing S&G's "Dangling Conversation"

haha i just saw this again and imagined the ilx reactions. (I think the teacher does all the discussing?)

btw i voted 12 bcz two tracks are the same song. I prob did the bulk of my repeated plays of the LP circa '75-78.

in 6th grade I wrote a paper on Alexander the Great and put a quote from the Iron Maiden song as an intro quote

hell yeah

one of my history teachers was a big Smashing Pumpkins & Tool fan. i remember writing "I KNOW THE PIECES FIT" huge on an empty page at the end of one of those blue books. when he graded it he wrote "because you watched them fall away?"

I don't remember any of my teachers being into current music.

there was one guy who had some Marillion posters but...

All of my teachers were music-averse, apart from my 8th-grade science teacher who had been in a band in the '60s called The Sound Carnival. He helped me on a project where I put a humbucker into a cheapo Silvertone acoustic.

But none of my English teachers ever brought up music or lyrics.

"White Album" and "Sgt Peppers" are probably tied for my favorite Beatles album, though it's been a while since I've listened to either of them. If I was going to put on some Beatles these days, far and away the one I'd be most likely to spin would be the 1970 vinyl compilation album called "Hey Jude", since it's compact, and is all killer no filler.

This one: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/the_beatles/hey_jude__the_beatles_again_/

'67 Beatles > early Beatles > '65-'66 Beatles = '68-'69 Beatles

i am boring and i like basically every beatles album, even the worst one (let it be, by a very long ways imo, and i still enjoy at least half of that one)