"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is first and foremost the album that gave rise to 'hopes of progress in pop music" (The Times, 29 May 1967)
Did the impact of the Beatles Sgt Pepper album help redefine popular music as a culturally significant art form?
Summary of Assignment
Choose an artist from the period 1900-1970 and to examine their relationship to the cultural and social framework of their era with reference to an important or influential album.
Introduction
In this essay I will be critically analysing and evaluating ‘The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers album in relation to their associated genre, their lyrics, their musical creativity, their social and political context, their overall impact on music and popular culture and…show more content… For anyone that was young at the time, the music automatically evokes memories of this period in the 60’s.
There were four songs on the album of which were most responsible to the social upheaval caused by the changing youth culture. The other songs on the album were very British pop songs, using classic lyrical themes.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Written by John Lennon & Paul McCartney)
'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' was one of the best songs on the Beatles' famous Sgt. Pepper album, and one of the classic songs of psychedelia as a whole. There are few other songs that so successfully evoke a dream world, in both the sonic textures and words." (Unterberger, Richie, Nov 2009. Review of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”)
There is a lot of controversy around this song; notably due to the initials of the song title relating to the psychedelic drug ‘LSD’, this however is not true as the name was derived from a painting by Julian Lennon of a fellow school friend Lucy O’Donnell. It has been argued that Lennon and McCartney have used trippy imagery in the lyrics; this however has been down to Lennon’s love for the works of Mike Carroll. The popularity and promotion of recreational drug use may have influenced the perception and acceptability of drug use among the youth of the period. For example
