Sgt. Pepper 50th: Re-rank the songs

[SCyclone]

I agree, Wilson is right up there with Lennon and McCartney. Ironically, he and McCartney were born two days apart.

Another songwriter from the 60's whose chord progressions are sublime is Burt Bacharach. Another great songwriter (especially his 60s stuff with the Impressions) born the same month as McCartney and Wilson, was Curtis Mayfield.

From nowhere through a caravan
Around the campfire light
A lovely woman in motion
With hair as dark as night
Her eyes were like that of a cat in the dark
That hypnotized me with love

Bacharach was indeed a singularly unique composer. As a confirmed music lover, and one who has played several different instruments, I am nonetheless in awe of people who can compose music. To think that man has taken the 13 notes of the octave, and composed hundreds of thousands of songs......

 

[matclone]

Bacharach was indeed a singularly unique composer. As a confirmed music lover, and one who has played several different instruments, I am nonetheless in awe of people who can compose music. To think that man has taken the 13 notes of the octave, and composed hundreds of thousands of songs......

My first impression of Bacharach was the Martini and Rossi commercials he did with Angie Dickinson (his wife at the time). As a teenager, with a corresponding attitude, I thought they were kind of stupid. Little did I know, then, that he was the composer (along with lyricist Hal David) of songs like Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head (B.J.Thomas), and Close to You (The Carpenters), which were giant hits, as well as all the Dionne Warwick stuff I sort of knew and liked. Anyway, love his stuff, like that of the Beatles and Brian Wilson, and like you suggest, its astounding how they could put a song together.

 

[TXCyclones]

1) A Day in the Life
....
2-13) everything else

This is pretty close to winning the thread except that there's a pretty solid group of 2 - 5, 6-7, then everything else. I'm surprised how high so many have placed "When I'm 64". Maybe its the awful woodwind/clarinet portion of that song I hate, but it goes straight near the bottom for me.

I'd have to say:

1) A Day in the Life
2) Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2) Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
2) Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
2) A Little Help from My Friends

6) Lovely Rita
6) Fixing a Hole

8) Getting Better
8) She's Leaving Home
8) Within You Without You

13) Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite
13) Good Morning, Good Morning
13) When I'm 64


I'm a bit surprised that Billy Shears has gotten so few mentions having joined the band on this album in place of Paul...

 

[oldman]

I just listened to Patti Smith's cover of Within You, Without You. Spectacular.

 

[Gorm]

Does anyone here listen to Day in the Life, or Little help, without listening to the "intro" songs that are ahead of them?

They play them on the local radio stations like this, and I can't start them alone. I gotta here the SGT Pepper intro.

 

[State43]

 

[MeanDean]

A little off topic, but has anyone else been disappointed with the Beatles channel on Sirius?

No, actually am somewhat surprised at how well it's done.
Particularly I like the inclusion of the solo stuff. I obtained and listened to them considerably when released, kind of phasing out by the late 80's or so. But really rarely take them out now with a few exceptions (Band on the Run, Plastic Ono Band). So I appreciate hearing that stuff again without digging for it.

Partly I like the surprise sometimes. Heard McCartney's "Oh Woman Oh Why" which I remember as a favorite B-side to "Another Day", which was a single only release. Even the A side wasn't included on LP until included on Wings Greatest. I probably literally hadn't heard it for 35 years.

Have probably listened to the channel 15 hours or so since introduced.

One observation, and maybe it's just timing. I've yet to hear anything from Let It Be. Have heard the Pretenders cover of "Not a Second Time" twice.

 

[matclone]

Does anyone here listen to Day in the Life, or Little help, without listening to the "intro" songs that are ahead of them?

They play them on the local radio stations like this, and I can't start them alone. I gotta here the SGT Pepper intro.

The transition between Sgt. Pepper and A Little Help From My Friends--well I can't think of a better one, so no, I don't listen to one song without the other. Sgt. Pepper is a bit cacophonous, and then, all of a sudden you're in a room, without the noise, meeting an old friend, Ringo.

 

[cayin]

Great album. Keep in mind the recorded Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane in the St Pepper sessions. Can you imagine being kid in 1967 and hearing the first release from those recording sessions on the radio, which was Strawberry Fields? That would have been mind blowing. I was born in 1968 so hearing it was cool, but in the context of also hearing similar copy cat stuff. As for my favorite from St Peppers? A Day in the Life. Just brilliant. I I Have never tripped on acid, but I would imagine St Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band would have been far out.

 

[cyclones500]

I'm a bit surprised that Billy Shears has gotten so few mentions having joined the band on this album in place of Paul...

nicely played!

 

[cyclones500]

Can you imagine being kid in 1967 and hearing the first release from those recording sessions on the radio, which was Strawberry Fields?

I've long wondered what it was like to hear S-Fields and Penny Lane, then Sgt. Pepper, and remembering it — I was only 2 at the time, so almost everything w/ Beatles was past-tense to me as a listener.

Although there were gradual yet noticeable steps leading up to that, with Rubber Soul and Revolver, the '67 stuff seems like it was a radically different animal. Also, consider the look of band members in itself, all growing the facial hair between end of '66 tour and the promo video for Strawberry Fields (alluded to in the American Bandstand clip posted earlier in the thread).

It had to be jostling. Any CF Beatles fans who have vivid recollections of that transition, I'd love to hear what you thought at the time.

 

[cyclones500]

Any time I see that Bandstand clip, it's amusing when the girl says, "I don't like their hair." ... 3 years earlier, that's the same opinion numerous adults shad about the Moptops.

Other amusing excerpts: "They're the same as The Monkees." ... "They went out with 'The Twist.'"

So some young fans already thought The Beatles had run their course, apparently (albeit that's a non-scientific survey, heh!)

 

[1UNI2ISU]

I'm a bit surprised that Billy Shears has gotten so few mentions having joined the band on this album in place of Paul...

Total tangent here but I've always thought that the Chris Farley Show skit from SNL would have been the greatest SNL skit of all time if when Farley asked McCartney if him dying wasn't really true if McCartney had said "Why yes Chris, my name is Billy Shears". Farley would have been on the floor and it would have just absolutely slayed.

 

[TXCyclones]

I've long wondered what it was like to hear S-Fields and Penny Lane, then Sgt. Pepper, and remembering it — I was only 2 at the time, so almost everything w/ Beatles was past-tense to me as a listener.

Although there were gradual yet noticeable steps leading up to that, with Rubber Soul and Revolver, the '67 stuff seems like it was a radically different animal. Also, consider the look of band members in itself, all growing the facial hair between end of '66 tour and the promo video for Strawberry Fields (alluded to in the American Bandstand clip posted earlier in the thread).

It had to be jostling. Any CF Beatles fans who have vivid recollections of that transition, I'd love to hear what you thought at the time.

Total tangent here: You and I are roughly the same age. Sgt Pepper and most of the Beatles catalog seemed as though it were ancient in our formative years (ancient, but great). As Sgt Pepper turns 50 it struck me that U2's Joshua Tree is turning 30; just a mere 20 years apart from each other. It seems impossible! There HAS to be a much great span of years between the two, right? This thought gets even crazier when one considers that Sgt Pepper & MJ's Thriller were only 15 years apart. /tangent

 

[cyclones500]

Total tangent here: You and I are roughly the same age. Sgt Pepper and most of the Beatles catalog seemed as though it were ancient in our formative years (ancient, but great). As Sgt Pepper turns 50 it struck me that U2's Joshua Tree is turning 30; just a mere 20 years apart from each other. It seems impossible! There HAS to be a much great span of years between the two, right? This thought gets even crazier when one considers that Sgt Pepper & MJ's Thriller were only 15 years apart. /tangent

Intriguing stuff. It seems unfathomable that Pepper and Thriller were less than 2 decades apart ... it seemed worlds apart at the time. I notice as time goes on, there's a "shrink" between eras, it becomes natural to lump together decades and genres, I guess.

I feel old when I see things such as your example about The Joshua Tree anniversary. I remember it being new — and at the time, there was a faction of R.E.M. vs. U2 fandom, and I was in the R.E.M. camp. Micro-tangent: Speaking of condensing music eras, I lost interest w/ REM somewhere around mid-'90s, but I still have affection for the first decade or so. As I've gotten older, those first six albums or so might seem like they occurred in a 2-year period.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Before I post this, I will note that I was born in 1987, so I do not have an "era dog" in this fight. However, building on the comments about the relative closeness of, say, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Joshua Tree at close-to-the-beginning and close-to-the-end of the rock 'n' roll era, well, that really was a nice era for popular music...

Modern pop music is too loud and does sound all the same, just like angry old types have been saying for 70 years. A team from Spain analyzed music from a 55 year period, using an archive known as the Million Song Dataset, and found that songs have indeed become both louder and more homogenized in terms of chords and melodies.

"We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse," Joan Serra, first author of the research and artificial intelligence specialist at the Spanish National Research Council, told Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."

http://www.science20.com/science_20...s_modern_music_too_loud_all_sounds_same-92614

There really was something special in pop music -- not just that, but pop art from some of the century's greatest artists -- in the late 1960s and early 1970s, followed by a long decline into an iffy 1980s. The 1990s were okay with the grunge movement and a nice middle-of-the-road pop sound (something like a No Doubt, for instance) before it all went to hell when the boy bands, auto-tune, and a renewed neo-disco era where pop songs are obsessed with and dominated by dance pop rhythms and beats that all sound the same under any examination.

Science says so.

 

[jcyclonee]

Before I post this, I will note that I was born in 1987, so I do not have an "era dog" in this fight. However, building on the comments about the relative closeness of, say, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Joshua Tree at close-to-the-beginning and close-to-the-end of the rock 'n' roll era, well, that really was a nice era for popular music...

Modern pop music is too loud and does sound all the same, just like angry old types have been saying for 70 years. A team from Spain analyzed music from a 55 year period, using an archive known as the Million Song Dataset, and found that songs have indeed become both louder and more homogenized in terms of chords and melodies.

"We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse," Joan Serra, first author of the research and artificial intelligence specialist at the Spanish National Research Council, told Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."

http://www.science20.com/science_20...s_modern_music_too_loud_all_sounds_same-92614

There really was something special in pop music -- not just that, but pop art from some of the century's greatest artists -- in the late 1960s and early 1970s, followed by a long decline into an iffy 1980s. The 1990s were okay with the grunge movement and a nice middle-of-the-road pop sound (something like a No Doubt) before it all went to hell when the boy bands, auto-tune, and a renewed disco era where pop songs are obsessed with and dominated by dance pop rhythms and beats that all sound the same under any examination.

Science says so.

Could you please present this to my wife to prove to them that modern pop music stinks? I would, but ,basically, all I really understand about this is that "It all went to hell with boy bands and auto tune".

 

[TXCyclones]

Could you please present this to my wife to prove to them that modern pop music stinks? I would, but ,basically, all I really understand about this is that "It all went to hell with boy bands and auto tune".

All of this is explained in another graph with a correlation factor that oddly reads f(x)=666.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Could you please present this to my wife to prove to them that modern pop music stinks? I would, but ,basically, all I really understand about this is that "It all went to hell with boy bands and auto tune".

I gave up trying to explain this to my wife long ago. A typical conversation...

Me: *plays a broad and diverse mixture of classic rock, from Beatles-inspired pop to hardcore prog like ELP, video game music and film scores, electronica, Western European classical, particularly from the Romantic Period, and big bad/jazz/swing music*

Her: "OMG you like such weird stuff, and it annoys me!"

Me: "These are all-time classics and music by well-known, popular, and well-regarded pop acts of their various eras and genres, they can't be all bad, right?"

Her: "No! Put on something good!"

Me: *sigh, and puts on Disney songs, Broadway, or Fleetwood Mac... and not early Fleetwood Mac or Tusk or later, just those two particular albums... well, 1.5 of them*

She would murder me if I tried to play her "Oh Well" or something.

Her: "Can't we listen to something new?"

Me: "I try. You never like anything new that I try to introduce you to -- even just different songs by artists you sometimes already liked at other points."

Her: "Let me show you then!" *puts on Zumba music... so Latin dance pop with the same rhythm and tempo and loudness every song but few actual instruments and auto-tune galore*

Me: "This is terrible. Every song is the same."

Her: "Ugh! I want a divorce!"

After twenty times, this is why we don't play music in the car anymore.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Interesting little article that makes the case that Magical Mystery Tour -- kind of a "fake album" of one-half soundtrack to their blah holiday movie and one-half singles from 1967 that did not end up on Sgt. Pepper's is actually a better album overall...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448175/sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary-second-best-beatles-album

Hard to disagree on some levels. SP hides some of their weaker songwriting behind some immaculate production and the overall "feel" of the album, but anything that has "Penny Lane," "Strawberry Fields Forever," and "I Am the Walrus" on it is hard to beat.