Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
[Parlophone]
It
wasn’t really until the second half of the 1960s that the album became
popular music’s main format to not only disseminate an artist’s work
but, in many cases, to make a musical statement by said artists. With
that in mind, it’s not a stretch to state that this one marks the
specific point in time in which the album format established itself in
that regard.
Considered by many the greatest album in the history of popular music, time has not been quite as kind to its status over
the ensuing decades, even within the band's catalog itself, as befits
such a designation. But its release was indeed a watershed moment that
showed what was possible for a pop combo to achieve and has proven to be
immensely influential, of course.
As
the folks over at Pitchfork acknowledged in their 2009 appraisal of the
Fabs’ remastered catalog, the shadow cast by this album, even in these
fractured times, is “so pervasive and so instructional regarding the way
music is crafted and sold to the public that [the album format] is
still the predominant means of organizing, distributing and promoting
new music…decades later, well after the decline of physical media.”
Not too shabby.
Released June 1st, 1967.
