Favorite. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Least favorite. A Day in The Life. For some reason, this song has never done it for me. Within You, Without You would have been my least favorite the first 100 times I listened to the album. The song is such a period piece, so I’ll now place it as my second least favorite on the album.
I have two Sgt. Pepper’s albums; the Beatles one and the Big Daddy one.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is my favorite on the Beatles’ version and my least favorite on Big Daddy’s.
Weren’t they the first band to have backward masking?
Maybe first rock band to have a “song suite” on an album?
And of course, first band to secretly have a dead member replaced with a lookalike impostor
Favorites: When I’m Sixty-Four, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, With a Little Help From My Friends, She’s Leaving Home. That last one has special meaning to me because it reminds me of a friend who ran away from home on her 18th birthday. 
Least favorite: Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
I used to really not like Within You, Without You, but it grew on me (this was around college when I started really getting into George’s songs) and I’d have to say it’s in a three-way tie for my favorite on the album - the other ones are Lovely Rita, a great garage-sounding track, and Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite. I’ve always really liked that song. It’s novelty, yes, but it has a certain edge to it that I like.
I still like When I’m Sixty-Four, but it’s starting to remind me of the schmaltzier songs that Paul went on to record with Wings…Silly Love Songs, etc.
IMHO, She’s Leaving Home sounds the most out of place on the album - classical instrumentation (harp and all), no drum beat, and just downright depressing. Pretty much everything else on the album is either more upbeat or has nice percussion. But I’d leave that track off.
A Day In the Life is the clear top for me. One of my favorite songs ever. She’s Leaving Home is the lowest point of the album for me, but even so it’s not terrible.
And I actually don’t think that the album has aged terribly badly. I’m only 17 years old, so I wasn’t around back in the ol’ days when it was released, but even the first time I heard it I was blown away.
The only way that song could’ve been any more of a downer is if George wrote it. 
However if George had written it, it would’ve been neither syrupy nor a ballad.
Oh Paul…
“Within You Without You” defines it for me. That’s what made me sit up and take notice. That was just a little before my 24th birthday. Now I’m about to turn 64. :eek:
Yep. The numbers still work out. I’m me.
And when I listen to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” I still think of the images from Yellow Submarine. Did that ever come out on DVD?
Least favorite? “Fixing a Hole.” But I don’t dislike it.
Very odd. I blame it on the person in that thread who pointed out that, since it was already 20 years ago today when the album was released, now that it is 40 years ago today it is actually 60 years ago today, thereby causing the entire thread to vanish into a chronodimensional paradox.
Personally, I prefer to celebrate the album’s American release, which coincided with my 11th birthday.
Yellow Submarine was released on DVD, but has since gone out-of-print, unfortunately. The second-hand copies on sites like Amazon are a bit pricey, too
Hopefully it will get a special edition DVD treatment like A Hard Day’s Night did in the near future.
My favorite is A Day in the Life
As for my least favorite, it depends on my mood. There are some songs like When I’m Sixty-Four and She’s Leaving Home that I enjoy sometimes but am annoyed by at other times.
I first heard it about four years ago when I was 16 and thought it was terribly dated. I guess I still do, but am mostly able to get past it. For a lot of it I have to listen to it in an appreciative Old Music mindset, something I don’t have to do with most of their other albums.
When we hooked up our big speakers a few years ago and I listened to the album on them with the volume cranked up I wasn’t able to handle it. It was a genuinely frightening experience, similar to what I imagine a bad acid trip would be like. I don’t know what happened there, but I might have had other stuff going on at the time.
Sorry. I also do that 20 years from now, so I should apologize in advance. :smack:
I’ll risk the demise of this thread by saying I like Within You Without You. When I went to college, I saw a band recreate Pepper note for note with full instrumentation, and that was the song that stood out. My least favorite could be Mr. Kite or Good Morning Good Morning. If you replaced those songs with Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane, I think you have an album as good as Abbey Road.
It seems like there’s not much love for Good Morning, Good Morning. Now that I think about it, Lovely Rita might actually be my favorite track, but I’m curious as to why so many of you dislike the former song. If you can’t explain it, that’s fine, but it seems like we’re all music people here, so I’m sure you could identify certain things about the song that cause you to not like it.
Or, rather, let me explain why I like Good Morning, Good Morning.
[ul]
[li]Uncharacteristically dark opening line: “Nothing to do to save his life, call his wife in.” In other words, a patient has died, and the doctor is acting callously about it (“Nothing to say, but what a day, how’s your boy been?”) Just another day at work. One of only five Beatles songs I can think of that reference death in any way. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Yer Blues, Rocky Raccoon and Taxmanare the other four[/li][li]Powerful, aggressive horn lines behind verses - similar to Savoy Truffle, another one of my favorite Beatles songs.[/li][li]Interesting time-signature change for the mini-bridge ("Everybody knows there’s nothing doing…) during which the beat is subdivided into 3/4 time on the hi-hat cymbal.[/li][li]A short but effective guitar solo incorporating (I think) an Indian-style scale.[/li][li]Unorthodox and slightly jarring use of animal sounds at the fade-out, including chicken cluck that morphs into a note on the guitar for the segue into the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band reprise at the end.[/li][/ul]
I think the track fits perfectly into the album, and represents a creative use of musical techniques. I also kind of like the clarinet choir on When I’m Sixty-Four, although I admit it’s kind of a silly song.
Upon opening this thread I expected Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds to be the runaway favorite. I’m more than a little surprised to see it favorited so few times at this point. It’s certainly the most quintessential song of the album for me, I love it.
Strangely, I’ve always disliked that reprise of Sgt. Peppers. Just why?
I never liked it much either, but as my friend pointed out one time (when we were both very stoned and listening to the album,) the opening drum beat of the reprise sounds very before-its-time - almost like a hip-hop beat. Listen for it, you’ll know what I mean.
Sgt. Pepper’s was one of two albums that when I listened to it for the first couple of times, I didn’t get it. But then on the third listen, I GOT IT. This odd event also happened with CSN&Y’s De Ja Vu album.
I’m a day late, but twenty years ago yesterday (June 1, 1987), the city of Toronto put on a free show of Beatlemania in Nathan Phillips Square to celebrate the fact that “it was twenty years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play.” I was at that show and remember it quite well; it’s hard to believe that it was twenty years ago yesterday. Even harder to believe that the album is 40. And so, I’m even older! :eek:
Anyway, my favourite from the album has to be “A Day in the Life.” So many different musical styles, but they work together; and that great huge orchestral crescendo and fade at the end. This one hasn’t, IMHO, gotten old; it remains fresh to this day.
My least favourite? “Within You Without You.” Sitars and the Indian mysticism that George Harrison (and the other Beatles, but it’s George’s song) were into at the time just didn’t seem to translate well over the years. This song dates the album as a product of the groovy, psychedelic, mystical 60s; but while interesting from a music history perspective, the song is not (again, IMHO) very influential today.
NetFlix has it readily available, if that helps.
Having listened to it again yesterday, my favorite is the triple punch of “Good Morning,” the reprise, and “Day in the Life”. I like Ringo’s drumming in the reprise better than just about any track he did. Listening to the end of Day in the Life again, I really got Timothy Leary’s comment, which I quoted in the other thread, after hearing Sgt. Peppers for the first time: “Well, my work here is done.”
Worst: “She’s Leaving Home” is just treacle. Perhaps if I were a downtrodden teenager I would like it better, but I didn’t much care for it when I first heard it back when I was a not so downtrodden teenager.
I’m shocked! I had no idea this had been allowed to go out of print. It was such a high-profile release less than eight years ago, with a massive promotional push (I still have my inflatable yellow sub from the Wherehouse) and probably as many merchandising tie-ins as there were for the original theatrical release (and that was a helluva lot). It’s bad enough that Help! was only in print on DVD for about ten minutes and is still awaiting a proper reissue job. Damn.