Best Song on Sgt Pepper by The Beatles Poll

I READ THE NEWS TODAY OH BOY

how has this not been done?

i don't think "most people" would actually agree on this being a great album in 2013

most people would, i think. most ilxors maybe not.

i don't think it's nearly as good as abbey road or revolver, but it contains "a day in the life" which is my favorite beatles song.

The mono mix is mindblowing, and I say that as someone who thought it couldn't possibly be as mindblowing as it's made out to be. But it is.

why missing songs? from the poll?

how has this not been done?

― Treeship, Saturday, October 12, 2013 12:10 PM (4 minutes ago)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Poll

good morning good morning wasn't going to win anyway xp

yah but getting better .

oh snap i didn't realize that was missing too. i never really decided how i felt about john lennon's (by all accounts genuine) admission of domestic violence on that song.

in any case, it's what makes the song memorable... saves it from being as trite as the sing-songy melody is. a punch in the gut, hauntingly tossed off and casual.

as you get older you realize that you don't really have to decide on or form a definitive opinion regarding everything (nor do you have time to)

aw i don't think it's trite at all

i like the threads (pretty sure there's more than one) where ppl are foaming at the mouth about how much they hate the beatles.

http://www.strong-island.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/conkers1.jpg

i don't hate the beatles but their appeal used to be that they were both very "universal" and also "ahead of their time" + i don't think their music represents either of those things now

maybe i do hate the beatles. i don't know.

i find them to be impossible to listen to lately. cloying + ancient

yeah. the level of vitriol just seemed really funny. I dunno, maybe that's just sort of a uk thing

i don't hate the beatles but their appeal used to be that they were both very "universal" and also "ahead of their time" + i don't think their music represents either of those things now

― sleepingbag, Saturday, October 12, 2013 7:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they arent ahead of their time now that it's fifty years after their time....... ?????????

No, and I was going to say that too.

I don't remember that being a meme about them, really.

Influential, but more that they exemplified their own time, I always thought.

i love getting better; the "holding me down (a-aah) turning me round (a-aah)" bit at the beginning nails hazy helpless alienation; "it can't get no worse" applied to john's personality is lol; plus it's part of the john-learns-happiness series that goes something like help! --> nowhere man --> getting better --> hey bulldog. (of those it's 3rd best at most but still.)

i was introduced to it by a phillips commercial tho :/

I was going to vote for "Good Morning, Good Morning". I like that song, but it's okay.

vg+

I can definitely see voting for "Good Morning, Good Morning." McCartney's solo is probably the best in the Beatles' oeuvre.

this is better than many of their other hilariously overpraised albums with all their retrospective perfect score reviews and w/e but idk if i would call it great. it's not something i ever wanted to listen to a lot.

There's something magical about the first ten seconds of "Lovely Rita." I'd probably vote for it just based on that.

^^^ Yeah, I love that opening too

this thread feels like a return to the early days of ILM

"Getting Better" and "Good Morning Good Morning" definitely my two favorites on here as a kid, not sure where to go here. Can imagine ceasing to care about this record but can't imagine disliking it.

kick into last chorus of lucy sways me

idg why people would even waste energy trying to understand why they hate this album. it's 2013 and this is a great album. i mean the beatles obviously did better albums than this, but that's like saying the monorail episode is better than 'lisa needs braces'.

idg why people would even waste energy trying to understand why they hate this album

bcos ilm fear of agreeing with the obv correct call

congratulations to whoever started this thread

darragh otm

4,000 holes

"with a little help from my friends" because I never thought I'd care about that tune again and then there it was in a songbook while I was picking out songs to play for aero jr. when he was very tiny and I thought, damn, someday you'll have friends, you don't know what they are yet but they're pretty great, and in the sappy way that obvious truths become unscalable heights of Truth for parents sometimes, the song became new to me. "how do I feel at the end of the day - are you sad because you're on your own?" suddenly a giant vortex of sadness, "yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time" a vast insight into how many people are falling in love all the time, etc etc

I don't kid myself this has more to do with me being in the right place to feel like that's what the song's about but at the same time it's been a year and I feel like I understand it in a way I hadn't before - that it's genuinely profound, where when I was a kid it seemed like it was really trying to be profound

have v. strong feelings about this album, although nowadays I'm not sure if it's because it's a genuinely great album or because of nostalgic recollections of playing it over and over on cassette as a teenager just beginning to get into music.

goddamn, the way the orchestra tuning noises resolve into rock music at the beginning of the title track just grabs me by the fucking gut, maybe nothing else I know compares to it except the beginning of pavement "silence kit"

voted for title track reprise for sentimental reasons but maybe should have given title track the nod

While this album must have seemed incredibly mindblowing and game-changing at the time due to its arsenal of production tricks, it's probably fair to say in hindsight from a songwriting perspective that this isn't the greatest collection of songs The Beatles put out. I would definitely have Revolver and Abbey Road down as being stronger collections of songs overall. 'A Day In The Life' is easily the best thing here by several thousand country miles, but I do find the odd time signature changes in 'Good Morning Good Morning' at the very least interesting. Joe Cocker's version of 'With A Little Help From My Friend' smokes the fuck out of The Beatles version here, much in the same way as the Stones' 'I Wanna Be Your Man' kicks several shades of shit out of the way The Beatles did it on With The Beatles.

The rest? A mixture of okay McCartney numbers which are hardly up there with the best of his work, George's incredibly dour 'Within You Without You' (which is just a duller version of 'Love You To' as far as I'm concerned), and Lennon at his least personal lyrically.

voting for Rita again.

...which, to me, is the weakest song on the entire album. Seriously. I'd hit the skip button on 'Lovely Rita' even if it were on Wings At The Speed Of Sound, that's how below-par I think it is as a McCartney composition.

goddamn, the way the orchestra tuning noises resolve into rock music at the beginning of the title track just grabs me by the fucking gut

otm. There's a reason Hendrix covered it.

question! slow stereo version of She's Leaving Home vs fast mono? i like the mono but can't 'get used' to it after 30 years hearing it the 'wrong' way.

can't believe i dropped that post, got in the car and drove 250km and a fight didnt break out in the meantime, i'm losing it

The zombies, Os mutantes and the beach boys did this album better!
Objectively, a day in the life is the best one, but I'm voting Rita again because it's a personal favorite since I first heard it.
― Moka, Sunday, October 13, 2013 11:29 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Eh...I don't feel any of these albums are really doing the same thing

Listening to the Rutles right now though... This album rules they wrote great Beatles songs

xp deems: i was going to respond to that post but didn't. i don't really understand why discussing how "innovative" a band is or whatever is "cuntish". it's just something to talk about. i do, however, feel that there is an annoying canon-making tick lots of people have wherein they feel the need to establish a band's "importance" to justify their appreciation for the band. so instead of "the dancehall elements of sgt. pepper's really work and were a surprising change from their earlier stuff" it's "before this, music was NEVER so eclectic, so daring". the latter type of statement is hardly ever true but it litters even reviews of non-canonical albums. ppl always trying to establish how something is new and different before they even get to the point of whether it is worth listening to or not.

i think you meant "music hall" elements Treesh unless i am gonna have to reappraise the fucking Beatles' contribution to Jamaican music

I'd give at least 1 listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Dub Band.

no, i was talking about the bass drop in "fixing a hole"

wait, now i confused dancehall and dubstep. i'm all messed up. sorry.

old british people, I'm really unfamiliar with music hall. Are there a music hall antecedents to Lovely Rita?

not really? but musically i can sort of imagine a George Formbified version of the song. lyrically there are probably antecedents - improbable romance with prosaic figure of authority. but as a whole it doesn't sound v. music hall-y to me.

the "music hall" in Pepper is more or less the same as vaudeville stateside, except with different accents

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eHpfWaSoxY

this is a 70s BBC pastiche/recreation of music hall, for reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh_aG5MzPVM

gonna step in a defend treeship on the basis that the irish equivalent, no doubt carried over the atlantic genetically or w/e by his forebears, would have been dancehalls.

oh i wasn't having a pop, i was clarifying the usage in England cos i figured he'd mixed it up

i claim a prixe, first poster on ilm in years who's not having pop

what does "prixe" mean in ireland the uk, respecively

the same thing respecively does

so many words for dancehall

Wake the town and tell the people that she's leaving home.

Yeah, separating it from strict music hall classification might mean that it's actually more interesting - that there's a distinctly Old World feel to things but you don't always know how that's created.

I think Os Mutantes do have Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles elements at times. This track from Hungary is just incredible. Sitar, flute, glockenspiel, strings, harp, but calling it twee would just be an unnecessary insult. At its best, this music aspired to something pretty lofty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUB9EL209H4

I'd give at least 1 listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Dub Band.

http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Stars-Lonely-Hearts-Band/dp/B001SZ28VK

I'm thinking "Fixing a Hole" cuz they gave it to George Burns in that awful movie.

I love that version!

I'm "working my way" through that movie. I'm up to the bandstand scene where Frampton and the BGs are call/responsing with a little help from my friends.

So far? A bit saccharine...

The arrangements of the songs are too close to the originals... but that's George Martin for you. Racking my brains trying to think of the comedy show where there was a recurring sketch of George Martin where he began every sentence with, "Of course when I worked with the Beatles..." or something similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIA_NVFnXZ8

Ah, nice one!

The arrangements of the songs are too close to the originals... but that's George Martin for you.

There was a piece about the soundtrack in Mojo a few years back. Martin and Emerick were generally nonplussed by the performances until Earth, Wind & Fire came in to do "Got To Get You Into My Life." All of a sudden, George and Geoff perked up, looked at each other and said, "This is what all of the artists should have been doing: putting their own spin on the Beatles' material!" I believe they've both gone on record saying that was by far their favorite track on the album.

I did watch "All this and World War II" last week, and I do have to say those 'versions' were pretty much fine. In context, anyway..

Getting Better would have been my choice, had it been available. I just listened on youtube to the stereo remaster vs the famous mono remaster. Can't say I can tell much difference except my for my usual complaint against mono - it sounds a little cramped and therefore flat compared to stereo where you have a sense of the sounds being spatially separated. why is the latter the format regarded as artificial? The bloody musicians and their instruments are spatially separated and arranged about a room, with the sounds coming from different directions forming a whole not because they're all compressed together but because the distinct and divided musicians create that 'whole' by playing in such a way as to perfectly mesh & meld their sounds - from their different spots - together into a 'whole' in the sense that everything fits together harmonically, melodically, vocally vs instrumentally, in other words, musically, and good stereo reflects that, and mono denies the reality of the initial separation that goes into the creation of a crafted whole.

Firsr 10 seconds of "Sgt. Pepper's..."

As stereo Beatles mixes go, "Getting Better" isn't bad. But it's distracting having Ringo's kit panned hard left with his overdubs center.

I don't think anyone has said the stereo mixes are "artificial" (or the mono "natural"), but the Beatles were actually present for (and have all gone on record as preferring) the mono mix. Beatles stereo mixes were a rushed afterthought; sometimes they were done well, sometimes not.

xp

Yeah, I was actually arguing that mono is, in a way, more artificial - basically for the same reasons you're talking about. It's an artificiality that I like, though. Sometimes I just listen to one channel of the stereo when I'm playing something that's in mono. Why listen to it coming out of two speakers spaced at some distance apart at the same?

Stereo artificiality I like less, I think, because you're tricking your brain. You hear something panned center coming out of the space between the two speakers, but that's not actually where it's coming from.

*at the same time*

this album is so sweet-spirited and generous and wonderful. love every song on it (except "lucy in the sky" which is kinda ruined for me by the lame chorus) and always will. but my favorite is probably "good morning good morning" just because it blew my mind when i was 17 and read revolution in the head and learned that "it's time for tea and meet the wife" meant that it was time to go home and drink tea and watch "a popular british middlebrow sitcom of the day."

even as a teenager i knew that ppl who dismissed the "wussy" side of the beatles (i.e., half of this album -- "when i'm sixty-four," "she's leaving home," "lovely rita," etc etc) were missing a HUGE part of what made them great. i love that they played songs your grandma would like and then played stuff like "strawberry fields forever" and "she said she said."

i mean the beatles obviously did better albums than this, but that's like saying the monorail episode is better than 'lisa needs braces'.

lol, a while back i defended revolver against someone who said it was inconsistent by saying it was "the last exit to springfield of beatles albums."

Didn't Lennon hit a waitress during the "lost weekend" or whatever his L.A. year is called? Hilarious back and forths between Lennon and Rundgren is all I remember?

IIRC the waitress actually hit him in this story, after he drunkenly insulted her or something. cynthia said that he hit her once when they were both teens, though never again after that. though lennon talked a lot in interviews about being abusive et al this is the only specific incident i've ever heard about.

i thought "plush" was on this one

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow! Wasn't expecting such a big margin for the winner!

well now 9 votes for When I'm Sixty Four is a surprise! macca's audible smile when Lennon does a wee vamp on the guitar is probs my fave bit on the whole damn album.

Big thrift-store jaunt today in and around my old hometown (pre-Toronto). Possibly the most pointless thing I bought was this on CD, an album I never needed to hear again by the time I left high school. But it was brand new, came with a booklet and supposedly a mini-documentary you can access on a desktop, and it was $2. Pointless plus cheap, I cannot resist.

Anyway, listened to it on the way home and took notice of the line "Fun is the one thing that money can't buy" in "She's Leaving Home." They'd already said that money can't buy them love, though, not five years earlier. They really need to get their story straight.

Barely 3 years!

They had obviously bought a lot of love, but no fun, during that period.

XP Just pointing it kut because it's so mind-blowing that there were only three full calendar years between the beginning of Beatlemania in America and the beginning of the Pepper sessions.

A lot of people--Warhol and Godard come to mind--were working at a frantic pace during that window.

if we posit that love is fun, then they're not being inconsistent.

Those 2009 remastered CDs (sounds like that's the one you got) sound nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPalf_-D0o

They had obviously bought a lot of love, but no fun, during that period.
― Halfway there but for you

if we posit that love is fun, then they're not being inconsistent.
― Thus Sang Freud

Further complicating the matter, this thing that can't buy fun and/or love--as two separate entitites or, if they're one and the same, simultaneously--they're also on record as wanting lots and lots and lots of it. And whatever it can't buy, you can keep those things for the birds and bees because they can't use them.