The Beatles' masterpiece Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was issued in the UK on this day, and It was released as PMC 7027(mono),PCS 7027(stereo) and a 4" reel-to-reel tape in 1967.
The album entered the UK charts on 3 June 1967,the following week it was at #1 (for 23 weeks), sold more than 250,000 copies in the UK in its first week of release and by the end of June had sold over half a million. It remains in the top 10 best-selling albums of all time, both in the UK and worldwide.
Musicologists regard Sgt. Pepper as a continuation of the artistic maturation seen on the Beatles' two preceding albums, Revolver and Rubber Soul.Moore credits it with aiding the development of progressive rock through its self-conscious lyrics, its studio experimentation, and its efforts to expand the barriers of conventional three-minute tracks.The author Carys Wyn Jones describes it as one of the first art rock albums, and Julien considers it a "masterpiece of British psychedelia".Rolling Stone 's Andy Greene credits it with marking the beginning of the Album Era. For several years following Sgt. Pepper 's release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form, and for the first time in the history of the music industry sales of albums outpaced sales of singles. Julien credits Sgt. Pepper with contributing towards the evolution of long-playing albums from a "distribution format" to a "creation format".In Moore's view, the album assisted "the cultural legitimization of popular music" while providing an important musical representation of its generation.It is regarded by journalists as having influenced the development of the counterculture of the 1960s.During the 1970s, glam rock acts co-opted Sgt. Pepper 's use of alter ego personas and in 1977 the LP won Best British Album at the first Brit Awards
The Beatles themselves never pretended they were creating art with Sgt. Pepper, or scrabbling after some musical integrity. They just wanted to do something different.
—George Martin, from his book Summer of Love: The making of Sgt. Pepper, 1994
With certified sales of 5.1 million copies, Sgt. Pepper is the third-best-selling album in UK chart history.Sgt. Pepper is one of the most commercially successful albums in the US, where the RIAA certifies sales of 11 million copies.It has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the highest-selling albums of all time. In a 1987 review for Q magazine, the music journalist and author Charles Shaar Murray asserted that the album "remains a central pillar of the mythology and iconography of the late '60s". That same year Rolling Stone 's Anthony DeCurtis described it as an "enormous achievement" that "revolutionized rock and roll".In 1994 Sgt. Pepper was ranked first in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. He described it as "the album that revolutionized, changed and re-invented the boundaries of modern popular music."
Album Back Cover Photo UK GB
In 2003 it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, honouring the work as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2003 Rolling Stone placed it at number one in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, describing it as "the pinnacle of the Beatles' eight years as recording artists". In the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Larkin wrote: "[it] turned out to be no mere pop album but a cultural icon, embracing the constituent elements of the 60s' youth culture: pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control."In 2006 it was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best albums of all time.That same year the music scholar David Scott Kastan described Sgt. Pepper as "the most important and influential rock and roll album ever recorded" .