Weekly Finale: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band

For this week's musical finale, I am honoring today's 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatle's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band".

While there are many people who denounce the "Sgt. Pepper" as garbage, there are just as many who praise it. Regardless of where you stand, the influence of the album on both music and Western culture is undeniable. Personally, I find the album to be more of a musical curiosity. It takes some musical risks, with some successes and some head-scratchers.

Here is my ranking of the top 5 songs on the album (which is all you will need to hear from the album), based on my own personal preferences:

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band/With a Little Help From My Friends: I put these two songs together because that was how they were played on the radio for decades. Nowadays, in the era of digital downloads, they get broken into two songs, which actually defeats the purpose of the initial song, which is an intro to a band performing the second song.



Overall, these two songs are just a fun departure from reality, creating a little scene for the listener's ears, with a bit of ear candy to tease the listener's enjoyment. The inclusion of "With a Little Help From My Friends" in the 1980 PBS film "The Lathe of Heaven" cemented the song in my mind, as the movie gives it a haunting quality, which expanded my own subjective view of it.

Also, "With a Little Help" got a lift with its most famous cover, by Joe Cocker, two years later at Woodstock:



2. A Day in the Life: This song is a musical LSD trip, with a lot of intense imagery that seems to go by in an unconnected train of stoned thought. However, this song was incredibly ground-breaking for its time, and is arguably the most important song from the album.



While "Day in the Life" has been covered multiple times, the strangest and yet most true to the original has to be the duet from Flaming Lips and Miley Cyrus:



3. When I'm Sixty-Four: A silly little ditty, but expressing a strangely sweet sentiment within an album full of LSD-inspired music, causing this song to stand out. However, when I think of this song, I will always think of the opening of the 1982 movie, "The World According to Garp":



4. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: Another musical LSD trip, but the imagery is downright beautiful. This song is more a work of art than a song:



In spite of the song's obvious connection to LSD (just look at the initials of the  capitalized words in the title), John Lennon claimed he got the song from a painting his son Julian made in nursery school entitled "Lucy—in the Sky with Diamonds", and confirmed by Ringo Starr. I'm not buying that story.

While Elton John had the most famous cover of "Lucy", the worst cover of it (and possibly any Beatles' song ever) belongs to William Shatner:


5. Lovely Rita: One of the strangest songs ever recorded by the Beatles, this is a love song to a meter maid, inspired by a traffic ticket Paul McCartney once got from a meter maid named Meta Davies:



Although the song has been covered multiple times, it is more of a curiosity tune than anything great musically. I like thinking of it as the greatest practical joke ever played by the Beatles on the musical world. Anyone who falls into the trap of covering it is silly, in my opinion. It is like trying to cover the "Alphabet song". That said, the Beatles' version is still enjoyable, albeit silly.

That is all for this week. If you aren't having fun this weekend, maybe get a little help from your friends? Regardless, I will return Monday for more blogging.

UPDATE: Silly me. Monday is Memorial Day. I will return on Tuesday. Sorry for the confusion.