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

to me there's only one great song on the album but all these are good:

Sgt Pepper's + reprise
Help From My Friends
LSD
Fixing a Hole
Lovely Rita
A Day in the Life

counting the reprise as a separate song I'm voting 7

I have never cared for within you but the one very bad song to me is good morning. I can't even understand hop they considered it good enough to record!

John's favorite George song ever was "Within You Without You."

I read that as George had to start doing Indian stuff before John paid attention to him.

voting 13 but I haven't actually heard the whole album

I didn't like WYWY initially, but I grew to love it. It's totally essential to the record.

Only song I can't stand is "When I'm Sixty-Four." "She's Leaving Home" is pretty meh, too. Everything else is ace, and Ringo makes it so.

I think "Within You Without You" is easily the most successful of their fusions of rock with Indian musics. "Love You To" is an embarrassment in comparison.

5.

These are all great songs.

all great, some more great in context. my favorite is Fixing a Hole.

The title track is far from a great song, to be honest. A mediocre pot-boiler by Beatles standards tarted up with some studio effects that may have been "wow" in '67 but are more like "so what?" in '17. The reprise is better because the drive of the track helps to give the track an excitement that helps to conceal the pedestrian nature of the composition.

all of these songs are great, pepper hate is so tedious and played-out

people who've had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered know we've been over this ground relatively recently. i don't really have much to add to that discussion or to the various past Pepper threads but imho this album is very very consistent, albeit with a couple of super standout tracks ("little help," "lucy," ADITL), and a greater role played by general 'feel' --- there are songs here i never think of as my beatles favorites outside the context of this record ("lovely rita," "good morning," "fixing a hole") but which are just awesome while you're within this record's smiling gauzy halo. song for song, recording for recording, it'd get creamed by revolver, but few albums in the genre wouldn't. voted 12, splitting the one exclusion arbitrarily between the aspects i dislike of the reprise and "she's leaving home."

Xp
The great mystery about this album for me has always been the title song. I never got its appeal. It is so boring without melody and anything. I always found it totally dumb. All the other songs except Good Morning are fine. 10/13 not bad for an album I always found overhyped.

The Inner Light >>> Within You Without You.

an unfair comparison, maybe: George had mastered the stuff by 1968. I can't fuck with the string arrangement on WYWY though.

if you want something to shock you into realizing sgt pepper's awesomeness, i recommend trying to get through jim derogatis's shitty attempt to take it down:

http://www.jimdero.com/News2004/July4SgtPeppers.htm

xxpost:

It is totally dumb! It's an incredibly melodically dull top line atop one of the most "cobbled together in a cigarette break" chord progressions possible. If those musical ideas had been on an earlier Beatles record, it would probably be seen as a throwaway piece of fluff a la 'Tell Me What You See', which has a similar lack of engaging musical ingredients. George Martin himself didn't think it was any great shakes as a song and he was OTM.

'Good Morning Good Morning' is interesting in terms of time signatures, but it's very much Lennon going through the motions and McCartney and Martin trying their best to polish it up into something more than it is. 'Strawberry Fields Forever' it certainly isn't.

But why the hell did they make it the title song and started the album with it. That seems like a "fuck you all" statement, we don't care about the audience.

A question: Is Lucy the first song with vocoder effects?

i guess the 1st version of the title track isn't "great" except in the context of the album. it does get away with it for me because it feels like a warmup for everything that follows and at least the reprise has some good guitar work that elevates it.

the cool thing about this record, and all the Beatles records up to the White Album, is that the band members *did* bother to try to make all the tracks good, even on ones they didn't write, and even if they weren't great tracks in their essence. Sgt Pepper is the sound of a band running at maximum synergy, and partially because of that, it's hard to imagine skipping tracks (in the rare instance I'd actually play it these days).

I tried to answer this thoughtfully but fuck if I ever want to hear any one of these songs again in the next 50 years.

we should now poll how many challopsy posts this thread generates

― Darin, Thursday, 25 May 2017 17:19 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These are all great songs.

― Jay Elettronica Viva (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 25 May 2017 19:03 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The vocals on 'Lucy' aren't vocodered - a lot of the vocals on Pepper were treated by applying different kinds of reverbs, vari-speeding or putting 'em through a Leslie.

Basically, standard production tricks circa '66-'67 alongside tape phasing/flanging (as heard on 'Bold as Love' and 'Itchycoo Park') which The Beatles never really did. The Beatles had the luxury of being able to hire top string/brass/Indian session musicians and take time making their recordings sound cleaner.

Xp
Thanks, Turrican so then the mickey mouse voice comes from a speeded up tape? Who was the first who did this in pop music?

Longish analysis of "A Day in the Life", one of the greatest pop songs of all-time.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/how-the-beatles-wrote-a-day-in-the-life/527001/
I love the surrealism of the lyrics and the cacophonous orchestral explosion in the middle separating the two parts.

Sgt Pepper is the sound of a band running at maximum synergy

I disagree, I'd say Rubber Soul and Revolver were the last records where all of the members of the band were all on the same page.

tape speed tricks go back to the invention of tape as a recording medium

"maximum synergy" is corporate speak for "high", right?

xxpost:

Exactly.

Lots of novelty records/comedy records used tape manipulation tricks and sound effects, the end result being (in the words of Andy Partridge of XTC) "psychedelia in square clothing"

Pinky and Perky, Alvin and the Chipmunks etc.

The Purple People Eater was 1958, Pinky and Perky slightly earlier... I'm sure there's even earlier examples.

12

Lots of novelty records/comedy records used tape manipulation tricks and sound effects, the end result being (in the words of Andy Partridge of XTC) "psychedelia in square clothing"

Pinky and Perky, Alvin and the Chipmunks etc.

― The Anti-Climax Blues Band (Turrican)

possibly, but i would argue that those seeking the psychedelic ross bagdasarian would be better served by the bluebeards' cover of "come on-a my house".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__1il8hOH0A

Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry's earliest tape-manipulation works date back to 1948, I believe.

Bing Crosby, the first pop artist to record w magnetic tape, was modifying tape speeds to match different pitches in 1950:

Since Bing did not read music and sang by ear, one take of a song could be in a different key from the second take. This change in pitch posed a problem when using segments from different recording sessions to make one complete piece of music. Today matching the pitch is easy with digital technology, but in 1950 it was different. To do the matching one tape was slowed down and the other was speeded up until the pitch was the same. However, the change in tape speed led to timing problems; so after the splice was made the tape was then slowly returned to its normal speed. Unless one was listening very closely it was not detectable. With the advent of the Ampex 300, Jack Mullin worked with Ampex to develop a unit to correct the Ampex 300 recorder tape speed. The unit produced an 18 kHz control signal modulated by a 60 Hz reference. On playback it then used the 60 Hz signal to control the speed of the Ampex 300 capstan motor. Not only did it adjust the timing problem, but it was able to correct some of the low frequency wow effects. It was now possible to record a tape on one machine and play it back on a different machine without speed changes that caused changes in the pitch of the music. It also was used to change the tape speed to match the different pitches.

ultimately this all comes back to nazi germany's invention of magnetic tape, which makes adolf hitler the true godfather of psychedelia

NPR previews the remix with Giles Martin:

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/05/23/528678711/why-remix-sgt-peppers-giles-martin-the-man-behind-the-project-explains

The new stereo panning of the organ that opens Lucy in the Sky could get on my nerves.

that's the way we use it rushomancy. and by high, I mean all of our key metrics are at or below baseline

Turrican, it's debatable, like everything else I guess. I get the feeling Sgt Pepper was the last time everyone was on the same team, even if they were on the downward slope to breaking up.

I think of Sgt. P as Paul's album, and as a result I think the album as released subtly ensures that the Paul stuff comes off best. I adore John's contributions but one has the sense that his work on this was... grudging. I like six or seven of these songs.

With A Little Help From My Friends
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Getting Better
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
When I'm Sixty-Four
Lovely Rita
A Day In The Life

I know we're supposed to love the George sitar stuff but I'm afraid it bores me tits off. Ringo's spotlight moment is more hummably charming than "Within You," sorry not sorry.

The Beatles themselves had already played around with varispeed effects on "In My Life" in '65 and "I'm Only Sleeping" in '66.

ultimately this all comes back to nazi germany's invention of magnetic tape, which makes adolf hitler the true godfather of psychedelia

new board description

'Strawberry Fields Forever' it certainly isn't.

Most music would fail by this standard.

Voted 13 - there are some lesser songs here but none I outright dislike. As for the title track: great guitar, really great vocal from Paul.

great guitar pulls & skronky sound in the title track, chorus is super heavy

Not the lightest of all albums ever released.

Yeah, I love the lead guitar tone in the title track. And those studio effects and arrangement don't sound 'so what' to me in 2017.

dunno if it's the best song here but "with a little help..." is ringo's best and most moving performance ever, imo

Picked 10. Could be more, could be less. I don't truly hate any of these songs.

Fantastic: "A Day in the Life," "With a Little Help"
Really Good: title track, "Getting Better"
I Like 'Em All: "Within You Without You," "Good Morning," "Lovely Rita"
Good Songs (without wholeheartedly endorsing arrangement, performance, etc.--the poll specifically says "good songs"): "Lucy," "She's Leaving Home"
Iffy: "Fixing a Hole," "Mr. Kite"
The One Song I Unequivocally Dislike: "When I'm Sixty-Four"

I'm a little out of sync--I find other people generally dislike "Good Morning" and like "Fixing a Hole."

caveat - i've only heard the stereo version

stunning:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Getting Better
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
Lovely Rita
A Day In The Life

pretty good
With A Little Help From My Friends
Good Morning Good Morning
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

good
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Fixing A Hole
She's Leaving Home

boring
Within You Without You

don't like
When I'm Sixty-Four

the obvious choice for worst beatles album is yellow sub since it only has four songs but otoh all of those songs are absolutely fantastic

calling "All Together Now" absolutely fantastic feels like a stretch

it is the weakest song on there but i do find it kind of offhand and charming and fun, moreso than paul's other attempts to write a kids' song

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.

I was born in 1985 and we never studied She's Leaving Home or any other Beatles lyrics in English, so perhaps they had updated things by my day, though we did get given an anti-smoking pamphlet featuring Pepsi & Shirlie in 1998.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbMSUQE36us

Love the Beatles and think contrived, look-at-me Beatles ridicule is silly. (Not Noodle Vague's--his is funny.) But I'm a little surprised that people who love the album (totally understand) would consider all 13 songs good. I would think "When I'm Sixty-Four," at the very least, would sound really cloying. Unless it's the most dispassionate definition of "good" imaginable.

When I was at school, we never had pop music cited as something to study, except for maybe "Blowin in the wind"

My grade 6 music teacher in 1972 brought in Cat Stevens' Teaser and the Firecat, Alice Cooper's School's Out, and a couple of other albums I've forgotten. He had a big red beard and was very intense.

Our Alice took "Schools Out" to school once..

Story: Coincidences, Whoo.....

Nice. I've got a grade 5 kid this year who knows a fair amount about Elvis, taught art to a grade 6 girl a few years ago who knew a bit about Bananarama, but it doesn't happen very often (unless it's a student who actually plays an instrument).

"When I'm Sixty-Four" is a highlight for me! I think it says something a lot more meaningful than a million vague ballads about staying together forever. I love clarinets and pre-rock music, though.

The words are smart, but I just don't like musically-whimsical Paul.

I like "When I'm Sixty Four" too. I wish they'd done more of that music hall style with tubas.

I still fondly recall our 60ish spinster librarian bringing in Styx to have us discuss "Boat On the River" in 1980.

64 is great for "Vera, Chuck and Dave"

Chuck is annoying, no-one in the UK has ever been called Chuck.

I just thought that pepper is the only Beatles album without a love song (unless you count 64 and Rita which are not really).

Chuck is annoying, no-one in the UK has ever been called Chuck

this is untrue, the manager of the first ever safeway -- which opened in shrewsbury in 1965, right across the road from my gran's house -- was called chuck, there was a black and white photo up of him on the wall requesting that customers come up and say hi to him. his signature was written like handwriting, except printed. all this was utterly amazing to me as a tiny, as were the big colourful cardboard cartoons meat and cheese and vegetables also up on the wall in the relevant places. my sister and I ran up and down the vast aisles and gazed at the strange food in the deli, which looked like nothing anyone human had ever eaten (olives) and was too fancy and pricy for us ever to buy anything. my entire family loved safeway, a vast consumia utopia. my gran used it as the local corner shop, sometimes sending my grandad across the road half a dozen times a day for single items.

a few weeks later i was there with my mum, excited as ever -- and something horrible occurred. a large clown came up behind me -- i wasn't yet aware this would be a cliche in years to come and was extremely frightened. i remember him vividly, especially his big shows, which were made clownishly big via the medium of badly painted papier mâche. he was giving away balloons. later i wanted a balloon but was too proud and frightened to go over and ask him. i still want that balloon, fuck him and fuck chuck.

big shows = big shoes, fuck him even more

Chuck is annoying, no-one in the UK has ever been called Chuck.

― Punnet of the Grapes (Tom D.), Saturday, 3 June 2017 07:59 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't calling people "Chuck" a Liverpool thing?

http://www.comedycentral.co.uk/offbeat/articles/13-things-that-confuse-nonscousers

Everyone is called Chuck, it doesn't matter who you are... You are now Chuck. Your dog is Chuck, your nan is Chuck... We are all Chuck. Chuck is us.

Yes, but it's used like 'pet' or 'love', not as a name. Despite mark's remarkable story, I stand by my initial statement.

This record was released the week of my seventh birthday — to date my favourite (an affective fact unlikely to be challenged this year). Seven is the best number.

But it didn’t come into our family lives until a month later, my mum’s 32nd birthday, 4 July 1967. We were on holiday in mid-Wales, on a hillside farm owned by family friends (my godfather) a little up from Aberdyfi. Dad hadn’t joined us immediately — in those years he often had to travel to London from Shrewsbury for days on end, to attend work-related meetings. So he drove up a few days later — we were a two-mini family, very Italian Job in that one way at least — laden with presents for everyone, especially mum.

Mum’s was Sergeant Pepper, of course. And it went straight onto the ancient gramophone in that farmhouse, probably immediately damaging the surface (I bet the needle hasn’t been changed to this day). It was played non-stop the entire holiday — bearing mind that that summer was famously warm and clear-skied, and full of generational hope. My parents weren’t hippies — they were a bit too old and too cautious, dad was 36 that year — but they were caught up in the sense of possibility, working (and living) in a place staffed by young adults committed to natural-science fieldwork and what wasn’t yet widely known as ecology. My sister and I were brought up semi-communally in this space, often babysat by these many idealistic young adults. This summer has remained the perfect snapshot for me of that idealism.

The record itself — the physical object, the sleeve and the inner sleeve and the disc and the label — my sister and I scoured for all its loving, baffling details. The fact — which I know now and knew nothing of then — that this was a land-grab made by the artists (so hugely successful their sales were a not-be-sniffed proportion of the national GDP at a time when other sectors were struggling) to strip control of product-terrain, like sleeve space and label space and even the run-out groove, from EMI (who generally used the spaces to shill rival LPs or EMITEX record-wiping cloth or whatever) and place them at the whim of the musicians, to hire artists like Peter Blake or whoever. In terms of aesthetic decision-making and conceptual control this was a revolutionary and transformative move. (Of course many of the decisions subsequently made were quite poor: musicians are not always artistically smart in other realms than music, and the gatefold-sleeve has been rich in crimes against art.)

I could read at that age — my sister was five, I don’t remember if she could yet— and just loved that all these words were there, the lyric-printing a first, I believe, not that I knew this then, of course, or cared. I loved the bright acid-pop colours of the sleeve — I still own my parents’ copy and they’re still sharp and vivid and dense with memory. I loved the mystery of it: why were they dressed like this, what was the story, how did these scenes and anecdotes connect? I loved to read but was easily disoriented by children’s stories not working as convention demanded — the obvious strength of all this (as demonstrated by my parents’ enjoyment) presented me with a new way to present story material, which I didn’t quite get. This was as thrilling as it was strange: an invaluable sensation to learn in such a lovely context, I think. At least if you think puzzled curiosity is a good quality in a critic — certainly it’s a reaction I continue to favour.

We loved the Blake insert pop-art cut-outs, the moustaches and glasses: in fact we cut them out and donned them, and scampered round the garden in the sun with them (lots of scampering around in the s childhoods). Ruined for future collectors, perhaps — but this wasn’t about the future, it was about an utterly delighted present. And mum and dad enjoyed our delight.

It wasn’t actually such an easy year for them, though we didn’t then know that. Dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s the year before, unusually young at 35. In fact he had been given just ten years to live — the synthesis of L-Dopa (key study published 1968) would change this (he lived until 2010) but in 1967 only a tiny handful of researchers knew anything about L-Dopa. So in this sunniest of summers, mum and dad lived under a shadow of expected grief and trial, which — to my grown-up astonishment and admiration — they entirely kept from their children. I remember dad talking a little to me about no longer being able to draw well, or write — as a young man he had beautiful calligrapher’s penmanship, he and mum both, and was a gifted amateur artist, mainly drawing plants, with occasional gorgeously evocative Christmas cards and such. All that he had to give up (he had to teach himself to write with his left hand instead of his right). I don’t remember ever being told that he probably only had ten years to live — though I must have been, because if I think of it now, this feels like a fact I knew all my life. But I didn’t; I just suppressed the first moment I discovered it (which I think must have been after this summer holiday when I was only seven).

They hadn’t been pop enthusiasts much before this — I have one much earlier memory, of dancing in the staff dining room with other members of staff to “She Loves You” as it played on a transistor on a high window-ledge with the sun streaming in past it. But it was not mum and dad’s radio — and in our flat we really only listened to classical music on radio three now and then, and much more often to classical music on records. Dad had read the famous — infamous — review of Pepper in The Times, by its respected classical critic William Mann, and been impressed by Mann’s admiring approval. (I still have the cutting he kept, inserted into their copy.) As a family we owned the LPs after Pepper — the White Album and Abbey Road anyway — but none from before it.

My favourite track was — and still is — “Within You, Without You”. Dad’s was “Lovely Rita Meter Maid”. My sister’s I don’t know: I’ll to ask her. Mum’s was “When I’m 64” — she loved the line “Vera, Chuck and Dave”, especially the way Paul sings “Chuck”, and the sentiment too, certainly as coloured by this situation my sister and I knew nothing of then. She lived — it only occurs to me as I write this — to be 69: margaret s (1935-2005)

Which fact is poignant to me in ways that become so much sharper when suffused by all this. I once asked dad, years later, about what new music he and mum might like to listen to. “We don’t really want to listen to new music any more, Mark,” he said. “We want to listen to the old music.” (I wasn't on ilx when my dad died, and never wrote it up here, maybe I should…)

Of course I can’t separate this record from all this flood of memory; both are wound much to deep in the making of me, and I find it literally senseless to ask which is the best song, that’s just not how I first experienced the LP.

(And of course polling is a beyond-terrible way to think about music AT ALL, but that’s a different argument, hi ILM you are all broeken, j/k I love you, n/k really totally broeken wtf.)

Thank you, mark s. That was beautiful.

adding: doctrah becky says hard to call which her favourite is, but it's between "lucy in the sky" (one of her middle names is lucy), "she's leaving home" and "a day in the life"

Wow at that long form post, the ghost of ilx past (and the polls leave me cold as well)

that was great, glad something good came out of this poll

"within you without you" lyrics are croz-level paranoid hippie - "are you one of THEM?"

Such a wonderful post, Mark S. Thank you for writing that.

Lovely post mark s, thank you!

Adding to the chorus. Thanks, Mark.

really that story is the best writing on sgt pep I ever came across

just read it again. still very touching to me.

THe way Paul says Chuck sounds a bit like Ian MacKaye in Minor Threat saying "fuck"