When he heard it in 1967, Newsweek critic Jack Kroll wrote that "A Day in the Life" was "the Beatles' Waste Land, a superb achievement of their brilliant and startlingly effective popular art." And he was entirely right. Naturally, the song frightened some people, including the BBC, which refused to broadcast it because of its purported drug references ("I'd love to tuuuurn / yoooouuu / onnnnn"). Along the way, there are ringing alarm clocks, extraordinary avant-garde orchestral flourishes inspired by Stockhausen and John Cage, and a sustained grand-piano chord that feels like a bridge to the future. The song has a dreamlike, drifting quality as it segues seamlessly from John Lennon's mournful verses to Paul McCartney's exquisite middle section and back again. It was a creative peak for pop songwriting in general. "A Day in the Life" wasn't just a mesmerizing creative peak for the Beatles. Pepper's is masterful in its own way (except for one stinker-we'll get to that), we're taking on the challenge of ranking them from best to worst. This is a ranking-and they can't all be winners. You've read enough hyperbole about the Beatles. It was a masterpiece, an essential document of the '60s, a pioneering concept album and a landmark that altered the course of pop for the better.īut enough of that. Stretching the boundaries of pop songwriting in colorful and seemingly limitless directions, the album is one of the few that can be said to have genuinely changed the world. The drama critic Kenneth Tynan declared it "a decisive moment in the history of Western Civilisation." The New York Times Book Review decreed it the start of "a new and golden Renaissance of song." TIME breathlessly deemed it ""a historic departure in the progress of music-any music." Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to rapturous acclaim and an almost hysterical degree of anticipation. On May 26, 1967, the Beatles released Sgt.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |