What is the most influential and best Beatles album?

How can you answer a question like “What is the best Beatles Album?” objectively? The Beatles produced so many great and influential albums that to try and narrow it down to one album is extremely difficult and mostly subjective.

I am not an expert musician, I have never had an article published in The Rolling Stone or Kerrang, so what makes me even think I could approach this question with any measure of objectivity?  Well, I probably can’t but I will try and be as objective as I can as I explain the reasons for picking the album I did.

So what is the best Beatles album? It took me a while to choose, and it really wasn’t easy, but the album I came up with was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Released in 1967, after four months in the studio, the 8^th studio album of The Beatles drew from the experimentation of Revolver, and expanded the sound providing the listener with a whole cornucopia of experimental music that borrowed from jazz, rock and roll, Indian music and many other genres.

With the use of orchestras and other hired professionals, the album use advanced production techniques to produce a sound that was ‘bigger’ than anything they had produced before.

The lyrics added to the experimental feel of the album by their range, using normal mundane themes as well as surreal and psychedelic inspired transcendental themes to again stretch the music from the normal to the sublime.

The idea of ‘Concept album’ hadn’t really been born yet, but this album was probably one of the earliest forms of concept music, taking the Beatles and transforming them into a ‘fictitious’ band on the cover of the album – it’s this overall ‘multimedia’ approach, making the music, the lyrics and the concept art link together that makes this a stunning showcase of modern rock.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the best Beatles album for many reasons (in my humble opinion):

• It was commercially successful and critically acclaimed both in the US and UK markets.
• It perhaps helped form the new psychedelic rock and inspired many bands including Pink Floyd.
• While the psychedelic sound was prevalent, the other genres mixed in made this a ground breaking album that broke many barriers – adding Indian style music to rock was almost unheard of – The Beatles showed that mixing genres of music worked, and worked very well.
• It is constantly ranked in the top 10 all time albums of all critics list (including amateurs like me!) and is one of the top selling albums of all time.

What is interesting about this album is that it was released at a time when the Beatles were waning in popularity and they had actually stopped performing live, becoming a totally studio based band. It was a turbulent time for the band as the massive ‘egos’ had just started to clash, but with the extra amount of time they had to prepare for this album, and the dedication and efficiency of the talent foursome, they managed to keep it together and really produce a superb album.

George Harrison, who was already on a spiritual journey bought in the sitar and began to use his influence to instill much of the Indian culture and music into the album – his influence is perhaps heaviest in this album out of all of the albums they produced.

Paul McCartney who was slowly becoming more focused, producing some amazing songs together with the Beatles as they progressed to their ultimate demise, created a fictitious character for each member of the band allowing them to step out of their Beatles personas and be far more free with the music.

As the album began to emerge, with themes linked to post war Britain, childhood and simple life emerged, but were abandoned to a certain extent as the concept of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band took over the creative edge of The Beatles. This adaptation of a commercial sound into a far more edgy sound perhaps is the biggest influence on my decision to name this album as the best Beatles album. It’s the ability and courage to break out of the ‘expected’ sound and to continue down a road of experimentation that had started a few years earlier, that really made this album stand out not only as a great album, but also as one that influenced many other artists over the years.

More than that, the experimentation of use of technology and instruments also started to revolutionize the sound of the album, and had a huge impact on rock music – with multi-track recording, instrument and production effects like flaning and phasing, and a heavy use of the latest wah-wah and fuzzbox technologies, they used all their skills and much experimentation to produce a unique and compelling sound that has been copied and adapted and can still be heard in today’s modern music-  it’s this innovation that gives this album the edge over any of their others and again helps make it the best Beatles album (IMHO!).

However, despite the innovations and the experimentation, at the end of the day if the music was poor then the album would have failed. The music of this album is among the most elaborate and complicated produced by The Beatles. A lot of the merit must go to George Martin who produced the album and used the studio effects to really enhance, clarify and augment the stunning music.

The Beatles seemed to find a way to grow their music where it no longer was simple rock, but was really a melding of genres and techniques that surpassed their simpler ‘pop’ albums and took them to a place where the music was relevant to all, not just a pop audience.

Just take a look at the song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” and you’ll hear a song that is so different to what you would normally expect from The Beatles, with it’s almost circus like feel, and yet it has a rhythmic undertone that is simply stunning and classic – it’s this melding of styles that is amazing.

And then jump to “Within You Without You” and you’re in a different world, one that is heavily influenced by Indian music and perhaps is the most spiritual and inspiring song of the album – it’s the sheer size of the deviations from classic rock (in both directions!) that is so stunning.

Of course, there’s probably no other album that courts controversy more than this album – with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, and despite Paul McCartney’s insistence that this was not a drug inspired song, they soon found this song banned from the BBC as its ‘supposed’ reference to LSD and it’s surreal lyrics were simply a drug induced song!

So there you have it – my choice for the best album produce by The Beatles and also in my opinion the most influential album produced by The Beatles.

Track Listings: Lennon/McCartney except where noted:

• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -2:00
• With a Little Help from My Friends - 2:43
• Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - 3:26
• Getting Better - 2:47
• Fixing a Hole - 2:35
• She's Leaving Home - 3:33
• Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! - 2:35
• Within You Without You (George Harrison) - 5:05
• When I'm Sixty-Four - 2:37
•  Lovely Rita - 2:41
•  Good Morning Good Morning - 2:42
•  Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) - 1:19
•  A Day in the Life - 5:04