Any Beatles fan (and with all the hype, even non-believers) knows that Saturday was the 40th anniversary of the release of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. It was the album that changed everything. Along with lyrics that stuck in your head, the music incorporated novel instruments, strange background sounds, and it had a storyline. The opening track introduces Sgt. Pepper's lead singer: Billy Shears. And many fans will still insist that you listen to the full album all the way through, not on shuffle. It's one of those albums that turn into a defining symbol of a generation, and influences the next generation of artists who grew up listening to it. Aimee Mann is just one example. Her op-ed in Sunday's New York Times is a love letter to Sgt. Pepper's, and she explains why she can't bear to listen to it anymore. Beatles fan? Why was Sgt. Pepper's so special, and does it still have the same magic it did in 1967?
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Love the discussion but wish Aimee could talk without the incessant "like", "you know" "kinda" "yeah".
The album "Revolver" was way better than Sgt. Pepper's. The songs were all quite a bit more sophisticated.
Enough with the Baby Boomer nostalgia, already. It's been done to death.
Cheers to Amy! I long for the day when we no longer have to hear about John Kennedy or Jackie O, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, etc. Good riddance.
Underwritten melodies? Fiona Apple?
Aimee Mann is pretty clueless and timid
artistically so it's a mystery to me why the NY Times and NPR would have her
be the one to look back at Sgt.Pepper's.
Why interview Aimmee Mann about this Beatle classic? She was only 8 years old!!Why not David Byrne (Talking Heads), Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Patti LaBelle, Chris Issac or Paul Simon?
I was mesmerized by the album cover and their unbelievable music. It was so unique to their previous albums.I repeatedly played it as a sixteen year old and loved it throughout the years that followed. Could never get enough of it! One of the most creatively imaginative recordings of all times!!
Why interview Aimee Mann? If you know Aimee Mann's music, you would recognize the influence of The Beatles' music on her work (Burt Bacharach is another influence). There are many other fine singer-songwriters who have been influenced by The Beatles, one of the best being the late Elliott Smith.
When Aimee Mann wonders what could be bleaker than Paul McCartney putting on a brave face, she need look no further than at Elliott Smith committing suicide. But Mann is too flip to make the connection, and too lazy a thinker to remember that "putting on a brave face" is to deal head-on with calamity. And this Paul McCartney did rather elegantly many times in his life. Aimee Mann comes off as self-serving. It's one thing to move on from one's influences - quite another to deem them no longer as valuable as musical works.
The fact that Sgt. Pepper has held up so well under such relentless scrutiny for forty years is a testament The Beatle' extraordinary marriage of craft and vision. How many pop albums can sustain such relentless scrutiny? Certainly not Aimee Mann's. The attainment of iconic status can and does lead to a certain overexposure; however the fact that one is exposed ad nauseum to a given work of art need reflect poorly upon the work of art itself. (Not everyone is inclined to gravitate toward the Mona Lisa, but this in no way diminishes the breadth and scope of said masterpiece.) Aimee Man fails to see the work in its larger context, outside and beyond her own personal cultural indigestion, her temporal frame of mind, as it were. And in the process, she loses al sight of all reasonable, quantifiably measurable standards of excellence.
Compared to Lennon & McCartney, Aimee Mann is but a bland and mediocre contemporary singer-songwriter with attitude--a pretentious composer of overly produced and plodding "power" ballads with decidedly predictable progressions and boring hooks. I found her piece in The New York Times to be both convoluted and disingenuous. Why The Times would publish such self-aggrandizing nonsense is a mystery.
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