The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

"Everybody's born knowing all the Beatles lyrics instinctively. They're passed into the fetus subconsciously along with all the amniotic stuff." - from the 1998 movie, Sliding Doors.

I don't know what I could possibly write about this album that hasn't already been written. Heck, when the album came out, CashBox couldn't think of much to say, either:

It is widely heralded as one of the best albums of all-time. You've heard it; you have your own special relationship with the music. In 2007, Aimee Mann wrote in the NY Times, "When I was 8, I’d never heard anything like it, and I can honestly say that if I live to be 100, I’ll never hear anything like it again."

Update: In its 2020 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Rolling Stone ranked this album at #24 while in 2017, it was ranked at only #28 on Pitchfork's list of the 200 Best Albums of the 1960s.

When I started making the transition from LPs to CDs in early 1988, this was one of the first 5 CDs I purchased.The initial CD release in June 1987 was a big deal.

Chart Peaks:

• US Billboard Top 200 chart: #1 (15 consecutive weeks, July 1 - Oct 7, 1967)
• Billboard Pop CD chart: #1
• CashBox CD chart: #1

Tracks: Yes, please.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: So many. Here's 4:

1. I became familiar with this album when one of the older sisters of my childhood friend Charlie gave him a copy for his birthday. I remember listening to it at his place in Odessa.
2. When I was in college, the lyrics to the song She's Leaving Home were included in a poetry anthology I had to purchase for freshman English. I had never thought of those lyrics in that way before.
3. When I saw Paul McCartney live in Houston in 2005, he performed a few songs from this album, including the reprise to the title song to close out the show.
4. Just this past summer, I visited the Royal Albert Hall on a trip to London. How could any Beatles fan visit that place and not hear the lyrics "Now they now how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall" from A Day in the Life?

A close colleague and friend served in Vietnam and tells the story of he and his buddies sneaking into the commanding officer's office late at night in the summer of 1967. The CO had the only copy of the recently-released Sgt Pepper LP and the only turntable on base, so the guys did what needed to be done to hear this wonderful music.