Letters to the Editor
Billium
Published Letters: 1
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Are you kidding?
[Read the article: Why is "Sgt. Pepper" so overhyped?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oh boy. How old are you guys? No, really.
Real musicians almost invariably regard the Beatles' work and Sgt. Pepper especially as genius for the simple reason that it is. Taken as a whole, musically it is possibly the most inventive and compositionally sophisticated work of pop music in a century defined by popular music. It's not even rock. It's its own universe. And aside from being compositionally brilliant it's only emotionally cold to tragi-comic emo navel gazers who can't see outside their own heads.
Just in case the structure of the thing escaped you, it's a kaleidoscope of colorful slice-of-life vignettes. A dream ("Lucy"), spirituality ("Within You"), joyfully impetuous infatuation ("Rita"), musing on a long life together ("64"), the daily grind ("Fixing a Hole"), leaving the nest ("She's Leaving Home"), growing up and getting perspective ("Getting Better"), and so on.
The bright, colorful slices of life are bracketed as a concert in the park and the whole is counter-pointed by the dystopian "A Day in the Life." Get it? Even the concert in the park is part of the imagery: a neighborhood gathering, like life itself. "What would you do if I sang out of tune?" -- where do I fit into this life? (That line is sung by Ringo specifically because he doesn't sing very well but gives it his sincere best.)
I realize these are the sort of thoughts that don't occur to the black t-shirt anti-everything crowd who've crawled up their own asses and died. It may be a little difficult for a strung-out brat who thinks his needle marks are proof of something deep and who plays (head hanging, drooling on himself) three-note riffs that make most nursery rhymes look intricate. But for a grownup the themes have a permanence and resonance that lasts a lot longer than wallowing in memories of hating everyone and everything from the ages of thirteen to seventeen. It's often unapologetically joyous, which is why, above all, it must be dismissed by the emo crowd.
And once again there's the music itself. It's like saying Mozart sucks because he never chain-sawed a Les Paul, ate glass or spat blood on the audience. Real musicians understand this. Cliquy fashion-victim music writers... maybe not.