Worst Beatles song on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

I finally "got" it too when I listened to the mono version.

I can't explain why, but instead of it being this overrated checkpoint from b/w to color, it just naturally sounded more like Revolver II.

It is really just 100% nuance and beauty in the production, thematically brilliant, great songwriting, everything!

OTM!

I listened to it twice today. There are no worst songs.

Good Morning, Good Morning is kinda weak too

^^^ Crazy talk

I really consider myself lucky to have been introduced to this via my parents' battered vinyl copy - stereo, but still, the first time I heard the old 80s CD issue I seriously did a double take. It's a completely different album and not a third as good, seriously. Can't imagine liking it the way I do if that's the way I'd heard it most of the time.

What blocked me from liking it for a while was the sleepiness of the middle songs - the energy of the opening just seemed to fade to nothing. Now those songs seem like the key to its magic. They're what create a sense of depth.

It's also nice house painting music. "Fixing a Hole" made sprucing up my grandparents' basement this morning seem romantic.

Good Morning, Good Morning is kinda weak too

Just the animals alone coming in natural order ending with a chicken that sounds like the first note of the reprise, get the hell out of here troll.

Unfortunately this is an album I played the HELL out of for a very specific window of time at around age 16, so basically when I hear it I involuntarily hear the dungeon rattles and smell the market streets of a lightweight and addictive MUD I was hooked on at the time.

Even John Lennon thought Good Morning, Good Morning sucked. Best song: Fixing a Hole.

THIS version of Good Morning Good Morning does not suck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJmo3LiP3Zs

just saying

GM, GM might be my favorite song on the album. I'm not even counter-trolling.

Expressing an opinion that others disagree with = trolling

WTF

Eh, just busting yr balls a bit.

I just fkin love the guitar, and the crazy abrasive sound of the horns, and yes the animal sounds.

Don't get hating on GM,GM at all, the solo is searing, the drumming is spot-on, and Lennon's multitracked, queasy, weird, "I'VE GOT nothing to say but it's o.k" is so perfect.

Don't like: 64, Lovely Rita, GM, GM.

Not crazy about: Lucy, Within You Without You.

Everything else is various shades of fantastic

HIDDEN GEM: Fixing a Hole

i've still never heard of Meet The Wife outside of the context of GM GM. i don't even know if it was a real TV show.

Macca is so great on GM, GM. Sure, the bass, but as the Doctor points out: that guitar break! I love his stupid flashy leads sometimes.

Meet The Wife (starring Thora Hird) was real! That is...all I know about it.

go to the show, hope she goes

everything is closed, it's like a ruin

As a kid, my least favorites were Lucy and She's Leaving Home. A lot of people don't like Leaving because it's cloying or boring or slow, but for me it was straight traumatic, like I could imagine the girl's mother crying and all.

The guitar fill on GM, GM after "it's time for tea and 'Meet the Wife'" is 1,000x greater on the mono version than the stereo. I really do consider the mono the definitive version of this record and have zero interest in the stereo anymore.

OTM re: that fill. Sounds like it's double-tracked on the mono. Who knew such a seemingly minor addition could add exponentially to the song's power.

> As a kid, my least favorites were Lucy and She's Leaving Home. A lot of people don't like Leaving because it's cloying or boring or slow, but for me it was straight traumatic

This was actually the one I most identified with as a teen because I fantasized about running away with my gf at the time

I need to hear the mono version ("You haven't heard Sgt. Pepper until you've heard it in mono" - John Lennon). I know "She's Leaving Home" is in a different key and speed - wonder why it was changed on the stereo mix.

Is there a way to buy a new copy of the mono CD outside of the mono box set?

I remember lying on the floor looking at the gatefold and fooling around with the cut-out inserts when I was six or seven. By then I already knew about the Beatles from their Saturday morning cartoon. My 1967 vote for worst song would have been "Mr. Kite," which kind of creeped me out. My favorites were probably "Lucy" and "Getting Better."

http://eil.com/Gallery/159484b.jpg

man, I guess I need to seek out the mono version of Pepper.

re: GM, GM - I dig Lennon's stark early take here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqv6qkANXG4

the sparse recording reinforces the suburban hellishness of the song imho

fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoBR_SxXoTU

Everybody else sees the background pulsating in that cover, right?

Right?

I can't believe 20 people voted for "Within You Without You". fuck all 20 of you. just kidding peace and love xoxo Ringo

"When I'm Sixty Four" is definitely the rightful winner here but I admit it's kinda cute that the generation that grew up with the Beatles now keeps quoting it. so maybe I'll say "Fixing a Hole", which I'd say is totally the "oh I forgot about that one" on here

also can I say the way the reprise was sampled on Paul's Boutique is so fucking brilliant. anyway, that's all I have to say about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Heard Lovely Rita on the radio the other day and it sounded terrible: plodding, repetitive. Had to turn it off.

Every song has at least one goosebump moment, like the intro to Lucy, or “where it will go…” from Fixing a Hole, or the drums in the reprise, or Paul’s section in Day on the Life… but apart from Day I never want to listen to the songs all the way through, let alone the whole record. It’s just a bit.. boring?

Arguably White Album is full of songs that are just as indulgent and lacking in swing, but they just *work* in some ineffable way that these songs don’t.

I’ve only listened to the super deluxe version on Spotify but it seems like a lot of the goosebumpy reverb is missing?

As with most people, "When I'm Sixty-Four." It's clever, mostly in the pejorative sense of that word.

I probably part company with most people, though, in counting "Fixing a Hole" and "Mr. Kite" as my other two least favourite. Everything else I'm good with (although tired of "Lucy").

I was wrong about the Harrisong.

A while ago I was walking past a bus stop and a man hanging out there said, "Hey, what's your favorite Beatles song?" and I said the first thing that popped into my head, which was "With a Little Help from My Friends." Sort of surprised myself with that one.

i think richard goldstein was on to something when he suggested there's only one real beatles song on this album -- the last one. all the pastiche that leads up to it is just bookended prelude. i mean, that's sort of obvious but also obscured by time. but it's so audacious it makes all of it work better for me somehow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/arts/music/archives-beatles-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-review.html

I know that Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help" cover is impressive, but for me it misses what's truly great about the song: its mix of friendliness and plaintivness, which needs Ringo's small Ringo voice.

I just hate Joe Cocker and think the original is about a million times better in every conceivable way

The only problem with Within You Without You is that it's an inferior sequel to Love You To.

Still, my shocking challops here is that all the songs on Sgt Pepper are good songs.

Joe Cocker's version is OK only in the correct context, as theme song to The Wonder Years, it is entirely unacceptable out of that context.

xp

This is true, plus there's a singlemindedness of purpose on Sgt. Pepper that WYWY kind of disrupts. Revolver is much more eclectic and Love You To works well in that context.

That NYT review is pretty brilliant, I find it hard to argue with (except that WYWY is at least in part satire, and I think many of the songs are arch rather than earnest).

and now that I think about it, the anecdotes usually received with solemn amazement that Lennon cribbed his lyrics from a kid’s drawing, the Radio Times and an old poster are pretty frank admissions that he was phoning it in.

“Love You To” is spiky; “Within You, Without You” is cinematic. Different approaches.

lol c@al

pepper has been probably my favorite beatles album for a couple of years now, i used to kinda hate it for basically the same reasons i love it now. it's like 'Beatles: The Musical', it's emotionally manipulative and corny.

it has the richly saturated color pallette that none of their other records have, too. in that regard the difference between pepper and the other toy shops & lollipops psych records of the time is like the difference between disney and walter lantz.

if anything i'm more partial to Oldies Station Beatles these days