Is there an album in existence more drenched in context than Sgt. Pepper's?
It feels weird to even use that word to describe it, "album." It's an entity, a piece of music history in itself, if not cultural history, or human history altogether. There's a seemingly endless list of accomplishments and an immense world of influence all attributable to a mere 13 tracks. More success than any band would hope to achieve in their entire career, multiplied by a hundred--all from just one Beatles album, and arguably not even their most influential one.
It's all absurd, and there's really no point in talking about it. I won't say anything that hasn't been said before. Plus, if you weren't there for it's release, you can't understand the full effect it had on the world. You just can't.
For someone like me, born in 1989, who didn't hear a Beatles album until he was 16 because his parents had been sick of hearing them for decades, someone who experienced the end result of the Beatles in the countless bands they inspired way before he could even pick out a single song... It's impossible not to be underwhelmed by this album.
I'll never forget the first time I listened to Sgt. Pepper's. It was one of the CDs I picked up on one of my many library trips, and I could not have been more excited. I had read Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums" list, I had read a few reviews online, I had at least a sense of the amount of hype surrounding it, and I was totally prepared to have my mind blown by what was categorically the greatest album ever made, according to everyone that mattered.
And I was let down. Hard.
Even now, having listened to it probably dozens of times, the general psychedelic feel of the whole album still sounds hopelessly dated. On my first listen, it sounded like a bunch of drugged-out songs about a circus or some shit. It was just...weird. This was the greatest album ever made? There was no way. Rolling Stone was clearly fucking with me.
I've grown slightly more fond of it over time, admittedly, but it never reached that lofty position in my mind among the greatest works of rock 'n' roll, as the critics and the writers and the rock stars lead me to believe. Pet Sounds clearly has better songwriting. Loveless blew my mind more on a technical level. And as a far as psychedelia is concerned, I'll take the diluted garage version found on Pebbles or Nuggets any day. It's just not that impressive.
Granted, this is me saying this in 2011. And I completely understand that. When you look at the rest of the music world in 1967, Sgt. Pepper's towers miles above anything else. I know. Studio achievements, technical breakthroughs, even the goddamn track listing was revolutionary. I get it. It changed everything.
But all of that is reliant on the context. You have to know that Sgt. Pepper's is a great album. You have to know that it changed everything. Which is all fine and good. But I just never thought the album stood up by itself, without that outside knowledge. "A Day in the Life" is a wonderful song, and is arguably the best song the Beatles ever wrote, let alone the best song on the album, but the rest of it is just tedious, strange, and sounds like it was recorded for a world I've never been to before. Which is true, I suppose. (I've never done any psychedelics, which practically drenched the world this album was born into.)
I guess my point is that I really don't like Sgt. Pepper's all that much, and I don't feel bad about it.
There was a time when I tried to convince myself that this album was incredible, just like Trout Mask Replica was fascinating and Faust wasn't boring as all fuck. But it's just not what I think. I'd rather listen to the White Album or Rubber Soul or Revolver or even Magical Mystery Tour. And that's okay. Because Rolling Stone doesn't get to decide what music I should like. I do.
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