title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Artistic experimentation, such as the placement of random gibberish in the run-out groove, became one of the album's defining features. "Sgt. Pepper" was the first pop album to be mastered without the momentary gaps that are typically placed between tracks as a point of demarcation. It made use of two crossfades that blended songs together, giving the impression of a continuous live performance. Although both stereo and monaural mixes of the album were prepared, the Beatles were minimally involved in what they regarded as the less important stereo mix sessions, leaving the task to Martin and Emerick. Emerick recalls: "We spent three weeks on the mono mixes and maybe three days on the stereo." Most listeners ultimately heard only the stereo version. He estimates that the group spent 700 hours on the LP, more than 30 times that of the first Beatles album, "Please Please Me", which cost £400 to produce. The final cost of "Sgt. Pepper" was approximately £25,000 ().


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Author Robert Rodriguez writes that while Lennon, Harrison and Starr embraced the creative freedom afforded by McCartney's band-within-a-band idea, they "went along with the concept with varying degrees of enthusiasm". Studio personnel recalled that Lennon had "never seemed so happy" as during the "Sgt. Pepper" sessions. In a 1969 interview with Barry Miles, however, Lennon said he was depressed and that while McCartney was "full of confidence", he was "going through murder". Lennon explained his view of the album's concept: "Paul said, 'Come and see the show', I didn't. I said, 'I read the news today, oh boy.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Everett describes Starr as having been "largely bored" during the sessions, with the drummer later lamenting: "The biggest memory I have of "Sgt. Pepper" ... is I learned to play chess". In "The Beatles Anthology", Harrison said he had little interest in McCartney's concept of a fictitious group and that, after his experiences in India, "my heart was still out there... I was losing interest in being 'fab' at that point." Harrison added that, having enjoyed recording "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver", he disliked how the group's approach on "Sgt. Pepper" became "an assembly process" whereby, "A lot of the time it ended up with just Paul playing the piano and Ringo keeping the tempo, and we weren't allowed to play as a band as much."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In Lewisohn's opinion, "Sgt. Pepper" represents the group's last unified effort, displaying a cohesion that deteriorated immediately following the album's completion and entirely disappeared by the release of "The Beatles" (also known as the "White Album") in 1968. Martin recalled in 1987 that throughout the making of "Sgt. Pepper", "There was a very good spirit at that time between all the Beatles and ourselves. We were all conscious that we were doing something that was great." He said that while McCartney effectively led the project, and sometimes annoyed his bandmates, "Paul appreciated John's contribution on "Pepper". In terms of quantity, it wasn't great, but in terms of quality, it was enormous."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Among musicologists, Allan Moore says that "Sgt. Pepper" is composed mainly of rock and pop music, while Michael Hannan and Naphtali Wagner both see it as an album of various genres; Hannan says it features "a broad variety of musical and theatrical genres". According to Hannan and Wagner, the music incorporates the stylistic influences of rock and roll, vaudeville, big band, piano jazz, blues, chamber, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music. Wagner feels the album's music reconciles the "diametrically opposed aesthetic ideals" of classical and psychedelia, achieving a "psycheclassical synthesis" of the two forms. Musicologist John Covach describes "Sgt. Pepper" as "proto-progressive".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: According to author George Case, all of the songs on "Sgt. Pepper" were perceived by contemporary listeners as being drug-inspired, with 1967 marking the pinnacle of LSD's influence on pop music. Shortly before the album's release, the BBC banned "A Day in the Life" from British radio because of the phrase "I'd love to turn you on"; the BBC stated that it could "encourage a permissive attitude towards drug-taking". Although Lennon and McCartney denied any drug-related interpretation of the song at the time, McCartney later suggested that the line referred to either drugs or sex. The meaning of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" became the subject of speculation, as many believed that the title was code for LSD. In "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", the reference to "Henry the Horse" contains two common slang terms for heroin. Fans speculated that Henry the Horse was a drug dealer and "Fixing a Hole" was a reference to heroin use. Others noted lyrics such as "I get high" from "With a Little Help from My Friends", "take some tea" – slang for cannabis use – from "Lovely Rita", and "digging the weeds" from "When I'm Sixty-Four".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The author Sheila Whiteley attributes "Sgt. Pepper" underlying philosophy not only to the drug culture, but also to metaphysics and the non-violent approach of the flower power movement. The musicologist Oliver Julien views the album as an embodiment of "the social, the musical, and more generally, the cultural changes of the 1960s". The album's primary value, according to Moore, is its ability to "capture, more vividly than almost anything contemporaneous, its own time and place". Whiteley agrees, crediting the album with "provid[ing] a historical snapshot of England during the run-up to the Summer of Love". Several scholars have applied a hermeneutic strategy to their analysis of "Sgt. Pepper" lyrics, identifying loss of innocence and the dangers of overindulgence in fantasies or illusions as the most prominent themes.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" opens with the title track, starting with 10 seconds of the combined sounds of a pit orchestra warming up and an audience waiting for a concert, creating the illusion of the album as a live performance. McCartney serves as the master of ceremonies, welcoming the audience to a twentieth-anniversary reunion concert by Sgt. Pepper's band, who, led by Lennon, then sing a message of appreciation for the crowd's warm response. Womack says the lyric bridges the fourth wall between the artist and their audience. He argues that, paradoxically, the lyrics "exemplify the mindless rhetoric of rock concert banter" while "mock[ing] the very notion of a pop album's capacity for engendering authentic interconnection between artist and audience". In his view, the mixed message ironically serves to distance the group from their fans while simultaneously "gesturing toward" them as alter egos.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The song's five-bar bridge is filled by a French horn quartet. Womack credits the recording's use of a brass ensemble with distorted electric guitars as an early example of rock fusion. MacDonald agrees, describing the track as an overture rather than a song, and a "fusion of Edwardian variety orchestra" and contemporary hard rock. Hannan describes the track's unorthodox stereo mix as "typical of the album", with the lead vocal in the right speaker during the verses, but in the left during the chorus and middle eight. McCartney returns as the master of ceremonies near the end of the song, announcing the entrance of an alter ego named Billy Shears.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The title track segues into "With a Little Help from My Friends" amid the sound of screaming fans recorded during a Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl. In his role as Billy Shears, Starr contributes a baritone lead vocal that Womack credits with imparting an element of "earnestness in sharp contrast with the ironic distance of the title track". Written by Lennon and McCartney, the song's lyrics centre on a theme of questions, beginning with Starr asking the audience whether they would leave if he sang out of tune. In the call-and-response style, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison go on to ask their bandmate questions about the meaning of friendship and true love; by the final verse, Starr provides unequivocal answers. In MacDonald's opinion, the lyric is "at once communal and personal ... [and] meant as a gesture of inclusivity; everyone could join in." Everett comments that the track's use of a major key double-plagal cadence became commonplace in pop music following the release of "Sgt. Pepper".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Despite widespread suspicion that the title of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" contained a hidden reference to LSD, Lennon insisted that it was derived from a pastel drawing by his four-year-old son Julian. A hallucinatory chapter from Lewis Carroll 1871 novel "Through the Looking-Glass", a favourite of Lennon's, inspired the song's atmosphere. According to MacDonald, "the lyric explicitly recreates the psychedelic experience".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The first verse begins with what Womack characterises as "an invitation in the form of an imperative" through the line: "Picture yourself in a boat on a river", and continues with imaginative imagery, including "tangerine trees", "rocking horse people" and "newspaper taxis". The musical backing includes a phrase played by McCartney on a Lowrey organ, treated with ADT to sound like a celeste, and tambura drone. Harrison also contributed a lead guitar part that doubles Lennon's vocal over the verses in the style of a sarangi player accompanying an Indian khyal singer. The music critic Tim Riley identifies the track as a moment "in the album, [where] the material world is completely clouded in the mythical by both text and musical atmosphere".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: MacDonald considers "Getting Better" to contain "the most ebullient performance" on "Sgt. Pepper". Womack credits the track's "driving rock sound" with distinguishing it from the album's overtly psychedelic material; its lyrics inspire the listener "to usurp the past by living well and flourishing in the present". He cites it as a strong example of Lennon and McCartney's collaborative songwriting, particularly Lennon's addition of the line "It can't get no worse", which serves as a "sarcastic rejoinder" to McCartney's chorus: "It's getting better all the time". Lennon's contribution to the lyric also includes a confessional regarding his having been violent with female companions: "I used to be cruel to my woman". In Womack's opinion, the song encourages the listener to follow the speaker's example and "alter their own angst-ridden ways": "Man I was mean, but I'm changing my scene and I'm doing the best that I can."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Fixing a Hole" deals with McCartney's desire to let his mind wander freely and to express his creativity without the burden of self-conscious insecurities. Womack interprets the lyric as "the speaker's search for identity among the crowd", in particular the "quests for consciousness and connection" that differentiate individuals from society as a whole. MacDonald characterises it as a "distracted and introverted track", during which McCartney forgoes his "usual smooth design" in favour of "something more preoccupied". He cites Harrison's electric guitar solo as serving the track well, capturing its mood by conveying detachment. Womack notes McCartney's adaptation of the lyric "a hole in the roof where the rain leaks in" from Elvis Presley's "We're Gonna Move".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In Everett's view, the lyrics to "She's Leaving Home" address the problem of alienation "between disagreeing peoples", particularly those distanced from each other by the generation gap. McCartney's narrative details the plight of a young woman escaping the control of her parents, and was inspired by a piece about teenage runaways published in the "Daily Mail". Lennon supplies a supporting vocal that conveys the parents' anguish and confusion. It is the first track on "Sgt. Pepper" that eschews the use of guitars and drums, featuring only a string nonet with a harp. Music historian Doyle Greene views it as the first of the album's songs to address "the crisis of middle-class life in the late 1960s" and comments on its surprisingly conservative sentiments, given McCartney's absorption in the London avant-garde scene.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Lennon adapted the lyrics for "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" from an 1843 poster for Pablo Fanque's circus that he purchased at an antique shop in Kent on the day of filming the promotional film for "Strawberry Fields Forever". Womack views the track as an effective blending of a print source and music, while MacDonald describes it as "a spontaneous expression of its author's playful hedonism". Tasked by Lennon to evoke a circus atmosphere so vivid that he could "smell the sawdust", Martin and Emerick created a sound collage comprising randomly assembled recordings of harmoniums, harmonicas and calliopes. Everett says that the track's use of Edwardian imagery thematically links it with the album's title song. Gould also views "Mr. Kite!" as a return to the LP's opening motif, albeit that of show business and with the focus now on performers and a show in a radically different setting.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Harrison's Hindustani classical music-inspired "Within You Without You" reflects his immersion in the teachings of the Hindu Vedas, while its musical form and Indian instrumentation, such as sitar, tabla, dilrubas and tamburas, recalls the Hindu devotional tradition known as bhajan. Harrison recorded the song with London-based Indian musicians from the Asian Music Circle; none of the other Beatles played on the recording. He and Martin then worked on a Western string arrangement that imitated the slides and bends typical of Indian music. The song's pitch is derived from the eastern Khamaj scale, which is akin to the Mixolydian mode in the West.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: MacDonald regards "Within You Without You" as "the most distant departure from the staple Beatles sound in their discography", and a work that represents the "conscience" of the LP through the lyrics' rejection of Western materialism. Womack calls it "quite arguably, the album's ethical soul" and views the line "With our love we could save the world" as a concise reflection of the Beatles' idealism that soon inspired the Summer of Love. The track ends with a burst of laughter gleaned from a tape in the EMI archive; some listeners interpreted this as a mockery of the song, but Harrison explained: "It's a release after five minutes of sad music ... You were supposed to hear the audience anyway, as they listen to Sergeant Pepper's Show. That was the style of the album."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: MacDonald characterises McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-Four" as a song "aimed chiefly at parents", borrowing heavily from the English music hall style of George Formby, while invoking images of the illustrator Donald McGill's seaside postcards. Its sparse arrangement includes clarinets, chimes and piano. Moore views the song as a synthesis of ragtime and pop, adding that its position following "Within You Without You" – a blend of Indian classical music and pop – demonstrates the diversity of the album's material. He says the music hall atmosphere is reinforced by McCartney's vocal delivery and the recording's use of chromaticism, a harmonic pattern that can be traced to Scott Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance" and "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss. Varispeeding was used on the track, raising its pitch by a semitone in an attempt to make McCartney sound younger. Everett comments that the lyric's protagonist is sometimes associated with the Lonely Hearts Club Band, but in his opinion the song is thematically unconnected to the others on the album.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Womack describes "Lovely Rita" as a work of "full-tilt psychedelia" that contrasts sharply with the preceding track. Citing McCartney's recollection that he drew inspiration from learning that the American term for a female traffic warden was a meter maid, Gould deems it a celebration of an encounter that evokes Swinging London and the contemporaneous chic for military-style uniforms. MacDonald regards the song as a "satire on authority" that is "imbued with an exuberant interest in life that lifts the spirits, dispersing self-absorption". The arrangement includes a quartet of comb-and-paper kazoos, a piano solo by Martin, and a coda in which the Beatles indulge in panting, groaning and other vocalised sounds. In Gould's view, the track represents "the show-stopper in the Pepper Band's repertoire: a funny, sexy, extroverted song that comes closer to the spirit of rock 'n' roll than anything else on the album".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Lennon was inspired to write "Good Morning Good Morning" after watching a television commercial for Kellogg's Corn Flakes, the jingle from which he adapted for the song's refrain. The track uses the bluesy Mixolydian mode in A, which Everett credits with "perfectly express[ing] Lennon's grievance against complacency". According to Greene, the song contrasts sharply with "She's Leaving Home" by providing "the more 'avant-garde' subversive study of suburban life". The time signature varies across 5/4, 3/4 and 4/4, while the arrangement includes a horn section comprising members of Sounds Inc. MacDonald highlights the "rollicking" brass score, Starr's drumming and McCartney's "coruscating pseudo-Indian guitar solo" among the elements that convey a sense of aggression on a track he deems a "disgusted canter through the muck, mayhem, and mundanity of the human farmyard". A series of animal noises appear during the fade-out that are sequenced – at Lennon's request – so that each successive animal could conceivably scare or devour the preceding one. The sound of a chicken clucking overlaps with a stray guitar note at the start of the next track, creating a seamless transition between the two songs.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" follows as a segue to the album's finale. The hard-rocking song was written after Neil Aspinall, the Beatles' road manager, suggested that since "Sgt. Pepper" opened the album, the fictional band should make an appearance near the end. Sung by all four Beatles, the reprise omits the brass section from the title track and has a faster tempo. With Harrison on lead guitar, it serves as a rare example from the "Sgt. Pepper" sessions where the group taped a basic track live with their usual stage instrumentation. MacDonald finds the Beatles' excitement tangibly translated on the recording, which is again augmented with ambient crowd noise.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The last chord of the "Sgt. Pepper" reprise segues amid audience applause to acoustic guitar strumming and the start of what Moore calls "one of the most harrowing songs ever written". "A Day in the Life" consists of four verses by Lennon, a bridge, two aleatoric orchestral crescendos, and an interpolated middle part written and sung by McCartney. The first crescendo serves as a segue between the third verse and the middle part, leading to a bridge known as the "dream sequence". Lennon drew inspiration for the lyrics from a "Daily Mail" report on potholes in the Lancashire town of Blackburn and an article in the same newspaper relating to the death of Beatles friend and Guinness heir Tara Browne.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: According to Martin, Lennon and McCartney were equally responsible for the decision to use an orchestra. Martin said that Lennon requested "a tremendous build-up, from nothing up to something absolutely like the end of the world", while McCartney realised this idea by drawing inspiration from Cage and Stockhausen. Womack describes Starr's performance as "one of his most inventive drum parts on record". The thunderous piano chord that concludes the track and the album was produced by recording Lennon, Starr, McCartney and Evans simultaneously sounding an E major chord on three separate pianos; Martin then augmented the sound with a harmonium.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Riley characterises the song as a "postlude to the "Pepper" fantasy ... that sets all the other songs in perspective", while shattering the illusion of "Pepperland" by introducing the "parallel universe of everyday life". MacDonald describes the track as "a song not of disillusionment with life itself, but of disenchantment with the limits of mundane perception".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: As "A Day in the Life" ends, a 15-kilohertz high-frequency tone is heard; it was added at Lennon's suggestion with the intention that it would annoy dogs. This is followed by the sounds of backwards laughter and random gibberish that were pressed into the record's concentric run-out groove, which loops back into itself endlessly on any record player not equipped with an automatic needle return. Lennon can be heard saying, "Been so high", followed by McCartney's response: "Never could be any other way."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: According to Womack, with "Sgt. Pepper" opening song "the Beatles manufacture an artificial textual space in which to stage their art." The reprise of the title song appears on side two, just before the climactic "A Day in the Life", creating a framing device. In Lennon and Starr's view, only the first two songs and the reprise are conceptually connected. In a 1980 interview, Lennon stated that his compositions had nothing to do with the Sgt. Pepper concept, adding: ""Sgt. Pepper" is called the first concept album, but it doesn't go anywhere ... it works because we it worked."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In MacFarlane's view, the Beatles "chose to employ an overarching thematic concept in an apparent effort to unify individual tracks". Everett contends that the album's "musical unity results ... from motivic relationships between key areas, particularly involving C, E, and G". Moore argues that the recording's "use of common harmonic patterns and falling melodies" contributes to its overall cohesiveness, which he describes as narrative unity, but not necessarily conceptual unity. MacFarlane agrees, suggesting that with the exception of the reprise, the album lacks the melodic and harmonic continuity that is consistent with cyclic form.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In a 1995 interview, McCartney recalled that the Liverpool childhood theme behind the first three songs recorded during the "Sgt. Pepper" sessions was never formalised as an album-wide concept, but he said that it served as a "device" or underlying theme throughout the project. MacDonald identifies allusions to the Beatles' upbringing throughout "Sgt. Pepper" that are "too persuasive to ignore". These include evocations of the postwar Northern music-hall tradition, references to Northern industrial towns and Liverpool schooldays, Lewis Carroll-inspired imagery (acknowledging Lennon's favourite childhood reading), the use of brass instrumentation in the style of park bandstand performances (familiar to McCartney through his visits to Sefton Park),<ref name="Irvin/Mojo"></ref> and the album cover's flower arrangement akin to a floral clock. Norman partly agrees; he says that "In many ways, the album carried on the childhood and Liverpool theme with its circus and fairground effects, its pervading atmosphere of the traditional northern music hall that was in both its main creators' [McCartney and Lennon's] blood."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth designed the album cover for "Sgt. Pepper". Blake recalled of the concept: "I offered the idea that if they had just played a concert in the park, the cover could be a photograph of the group just after the concert with the crowd who had just watched the concert, watching them." He added, "If we did this by using cardboard cut-outs, it could be a magical crowd of whomever they wanted."<ref name="Humphries/MojoSpecial"></ref> According to McCartney, he himself provided the ink drawing on which Blake and Haworth based the design. The cover was art-directed by Robert Fraser and photographed by Michael Cooper.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The front of the LP includes a colourful collage featuring the Beatles in costume as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing with a group of life-sized cardboard cut-outs of famous people. Each of the Beatles sports a heavy moustache, after Harrison had first grown one as a disguise during his visit to India. The moustaches reflected the growing influence of hippie style trends, while the group's clothing, in Gould's description, "spoofed the vogue in Britain for military fashions". The centre of the cover depicts the Beatles standing behind a bass drum on which fairground artist Joe Ephgrave painted the words of the album's title. In front of the drum is an arrangement of flowers that spell out "Beatles". The group are dressed in satin day-glo-coloured military-style uniforms that were manufactured by the London theatrical costumer M. Berman Ltd. Next to the Beatles are wax sculptures of the band members in their suits and moptop haircuts from the Beatlemania era, borrowed from Madame Tussauds. Amid the greenery are figurines of the Eastern deities Buddha and Lakshmi.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The cover collage includes 57 photographs and nine waxworks. Author Ian Inglis views the tableau "as a guidebook to the cultural topography of the decade" that conveyed the increasing democratisation of society whereby "traditional barriers between 'high' and 'low' culture were being eroded", while Case cites it as the most explicit demonstration of pop culture's "continuity with the avant-gardes of yesteryear". The final grouping included Stockhausen and Carroll, along with singers such as Bob Dylan and Bobby Breen; film stars Marlon Brando, Tyrone Power, Tony Curtis, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West and Marilyn Monroe; artist Aubrey Beardsley; boxer Sonny Liston and footballer Albert Stubbins. Also included were comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy; writers H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde and Dylan Thomas; and the philosophers and scientists Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Harrison chose the Self-Realization Fellowship gurus Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar and Paramahansa Yogananda. The Rolling Stones are represented by a doll wearing a shirt emblazoned with a message of welcome to the band.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Fearing controversy, EMI rejected Lennon's request for images of Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ and Harrison's for Mahatma Gandhi. When McCartney was asked why the Beatles did not include Elvis Presley among the musical artists, he replied: "Elvis was too important and too far above the rest even to mention."<ref name="Fleming/RS"></ref> Starr was the only Beatle who offered no suggestions for the collage, telling Blake, "Whatever the others say is fine by me." The final cost for the cover art was nearly £3,000 (), an extravagant sum for a time when album covers would typically cost around £50 ().


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The 30 March 1967 photo session with Cooper also produced the back cover and the inside gatefold, which Inglis describes as conveying "an obvious and immediate warmth ... which distances it from the sterility and artifice typical of such images". McCartney recalled the inner-gatefold image as an example of the Beatles' interest in "eye messages", adding: "So with Michael Cooper's inside photo, we all said, 'Now look into this camera and really say I love you! Really try and feel love; really give love through this!'... [And] if you look at it you'll see the big effort from the eyes." In Lennon's description, Cooper's photos of the band showed "two people who are flying [on drugs], and two who aren't".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The album's lyrics were printed in full on the back cover, the first time this had been done on a rock LP. The record's inner sleeve featured artwork by the Dutch design team the Fool that eschewed for the first time the standard white paper in favour of an abstract pattern of waves of maroon, red, pink and white. Included as a bonus gift was a sheet of cardboard cut-outs designed by Blake and Haworth. These consisted of a postcard-sized portrait of Sgt. Pepper (probably based on a photograph of British Army officer James Melville Babington, but also noted as being similar to a statue from Lennon's house that was used on the front cover), a fake moustache, two sets of sergeant stripes, two lapel badges, and a stand-up cut-out of the band in their satin uniforms. Moore writes that the inclusion of these items helped fans "pretend to be in the band".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The album was previewed on the pirate radio station Radio London on 12 May and officially on the BBC Light Programme's show "Where It's At", by Kenny Everett, on 20 May. Everett played the entire album apart from "A Day in the Life". The day before Everett's broadcast, Epstein hosted a launch party for music journalists and disc jockeys at his house in Belgravia in central London. The event was a new initiative in pop promotion and furthered the significance of the album's release. "Melody Maker" reporter described it as the first "listen-in" and typical of the Beatles' penchant for innovation.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The party marked the band's first group interaction with the press in close to a year. Norrie Drummond of the "NME" wrote that they had been "virtually incommunicado" over that time, leading a national newspaper to complain that the band were "contemplative, secretive and exclusive".<ref name="Drummond/NME"></ref> Some of the journalists present were shocked by the Beatles' appearance, particularly that of Lennon and Harrison, as the band members' bohemian attire contrasted sharply with their former image.<ref name="Womack/LaunchParty"></ref> Music journalist Ray Coleman recalled that Lennon looked "haggard, old, ill" and clearly under the influence of drugs. Biographer Howard Sounes likens the Beatles' presence to a gathering of the British royal family and highlights a photo from the event that shows Lennon shaking McCartney's hand "in an exaggeratedly congratulatory way, throwing his head back in sarcastic laughter".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: On 26 May, "Sgt. Pepper" was given a rush-release in the UK, ahead of the scheduled date of 1 June. The band's eighth LP, it was the first Beatles album where the track listings were exactly the same for the UK and US versions. The US release took place on 2 June. Capitol Records' advertising for the album emphasised that the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper's band were one and the same.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" was widely perceived by listeners as the soundtrack to the Summer of Love, during a year that author Peter Lavezzoli calls "a watershed moment in the West when the search for higher consciousness and an alternative world view had reached critical mass". "Rolling Stone" magazine's Langdon Winner recalled:


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: According to Riley, the album "drew people together through the common experience of pop on a larger scale than ever before". In MacDonald's description, an "almost religious awe surrounded the LP"; he says that its impact was cross-generational, as "Young and old alike were entranced", and era-defining, in that the "psychic shiver" it inspired across the world was "nothing less than a cinematic dissolve from one "Zeitgeist" to another". In his view, "Sgt. Pepper" conveyed the psychedelic experience so effectively to listeners unfamiliar with hallucinogenic drugs that "If such a thing as a cultural 'contact high' is possible, it happened here." Music journalist Mark Ellen, a teenager in 1967, recalls listening to part of the album at a friend's house and then hearing the rest playing at the next house he visited as if the record was emanating communally from "one giant Dansette". He says the most remarkable thing was its acceptance by adults who had turned against the Beatles when they became "gaunt and enigmatic", and how the group, recast as polished "masters of ceremony", were now "the very family favourites they'd sought to satirise".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Writing in his book "Electric Shock", Peter Doggett describes "Sgt. Pepper" as "the biggest pop happening" to take place between the Beatles' debut on American television in February 1964 and Lennon's murder in December 1980, while Norman writes: "A whole generation, still used to happy landmarks through life, would always remember exactly when and where they first played it..." The album's impact was felt at the Monterey International Pop Festival, the second event in the Summer of Love, organised by Taylor and held over 16–18 June in county fairgrounds south of San Francisco. "Sgt. Pepper" was played in kiosks and stands there, and festival staff wore badges carrying Lennon's lyric "A splendid time is guaranteed for all".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: American radio stations interrupted their regular scheduling, playing the album virtually non-stop, often from start to finish. Emphasising its identity as a self-contained work, none of the songs were issued as singles at the time or available on spin-off EPs. Instead, the Beatles released "All You Need Is Love" as a single in July, after performing the song on the "Our World" satellite broadcast on 25 June before an audience estimated at 400 million. According to sociomusicologist Simon Frith, the international broadcast served to confirm "the Beatles' evangelical role" amid the public's embrace of "Sgt. Pepper".<ref name="Frith/HoR"> Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).</ref> In the UK, "Our World" also quelled the furore that followed McCartney's repeated admission in mid June that he had taken LSD. In Norman's description, this admission was indicative of how "invulnerable" McCartney felt after "Sgt. Pepper"; it made the band's drug-taking public knowledge and confirmed the link between the album and drugs.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" topped the "Record Retailer" albums chart (now the UK Albums Chart) for 23 consecutive weeks from 10 June, with a further four weeks at number one in the period through to February 1968. The record sold 250,000 copies in the UK during its first seven days on sale there. The album held the number one position on the "Billboard" Top LPs chart in the US for 15 weeks, from 1 July to 13 October 1967, and remained in the top 200 for 113 consecutive weeks. It also topped charts in many other countries.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: With 2.5 million copies sold within three months of its release, "Sgt. Pepper" initial commercial success exceeded that of all previous Beatles albums. In the UK, it was the best-selling album of 1967 and of the decade.<ref name="Mawer/1969"></ref> According to figures published in 2009 by former Capitol executive David Kronemyer, further to estimates he gave in "MuseWire" magazine, the album had sold 2,360,423 copies in the US by 31 December 1967 and 3,372,581 copies by the end of the decade.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The release of "Sgt. Pepper" coincided with a period when, with the advent of dedicated rock criticism, commentators sought to recognise artistry in pop music, particularly in the Beatles' work, and identify albums as refined artistic statements.<ref name="Hamilton/Slate"></ref> In America, this approach had been heightened by the "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" single, and was also exemplified by Leonard Bernstein's television program "", broadcast by CBS in April 1967. Following the release of the Beatles' single, in author Bernard Gendron's description, a "discursive frenzy" ensued as "Time", "Newsweek" and other publications from the cultural mainstream increasingly voiced their "ecstatic approbation toward the Beatles".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The vast majority of contemporary reviews of "Sgt. Pepper" were positive, with the album receiving widespread critical acclaim. Schaffner said that the consensus was aptly summed up by Tom Phillips in "The Village Voice", when he called the LP "the most ambitious and most successful record album ever issued". Among Britain's pop press, Peter Jones of "Record Mirror" said the album was "clever and brilliant, from raucous to poignant and back again", while "Disc and Music Echo" reviewer called it "a beautiful and potent record, unique, clever, and stunning". In "The Times", William Mann described "Sgt. Pepper" as a "pop music master-class" and commented that, so considerable were its musical advances, "the only track that would have been conceivable in pop songs five years ago" was "With a Little Help from My Friends". Having been among the first British critics to fully appreciate "Revolver", Peter Clayton of "Gramophone" magazine said that the new album was "like nearly everything the Beatles do, bizarre, wonderful, perverse, beautiful, exciting, provocative, exasperating, compassionate and mocking". He found "plenty of electronic gimmickry on the record" before concluding: "but that isn't the heart of the thing. It's the combination of imagination, cheek and skill that make this such a rewarding LP." Wilfrid Mellers, in his review for "New Statesman", praised the album's elevation of pop music to the level of fine art, while Kenneth Tynan, "The Times" theatre critic, said it represented "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilisation". "Newsweek" Jack Kroll called "Sgt. Pepper" a "masterpiece" and compared its lyrics with literary works by Edith Sitwell, Harold Pinter and T. S. Eliot, particularly "A Day in the Life", which he likened to Eliot's "The Waste Land". "The New Yorker" paired the Beatles with Duke Ellington, as artists who operated "in that special territory where entertainment slips into art".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: One of the few well-known American rock critics at the time, and another early champion of "Revolver", Richard Goldstein wrote a scathing review in "The New York Times". He characterised "Sgt. Pepper" as a "spoiled" child and "an album of special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent", and was critical of the Beatles for sacrificing their authenticity to become "cloistered composers". Although he admired "A Day in the Life", comparing it to a work by Wagner, Goldstein said that the songs lacked lyrical substance such that "tone overtakes meaning", an aesthetic he blamed on "posturing and put-on" in the form of production effects such as echo and reverb. As a near-lone voice of dissent, he was widely castigated for his views. Four days later, "The Village Voice", where Goldstein had become a celebrated columnist since 1966, reacted to the "hornet's nest" of complaints, by publishing Phillips' highly favourable review. According to Schaffner, Goldstein was "kept busy for months" justifying his opinions, which included writing a defence of his review, for the "Voice", in July.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Among the commentators who responded to Goldstein's critique, composer Ned Rorem, writing in "The New York Review of Books", credited the Beatles with possessing a "magic of genius" akin to Mozart and characterised "Sgt. Pepper" as a harbinger of a "golden Renaissance of Song". "Time" quoted musicologists and avant-garde composers who equated the standard of the Beatles' songwriting to Schubert and Schumann, and located the band's work to electronic music; the magazine concluded that the album was "a historic departure in the progress of music – any music". Literary critic Richard Poirier wrote a laudatory appreciation of the Beatles in the journal "Partisan Review" and said that "listening to the "Sgt. Pepper" album one thinks not simply of the history of popular music but the history of this century." In his December 1967 column for "Esquire", Robert Christgau described "Sgt. Pepper" as "a consolidation, more intricate than "Revolver" but not more substantial". He suggested that Goldstein had fallen "victim to overanticipation", identifying his primary error as "allow[ing] all the filters and reverbs and orchestral effects and overdubs to deafen him to the stuff underneath, which was pretty nice".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In the wake of "Sgt. Pepper", the underground and mainstream press widely publicised the Beatles as leaders of youth culture, as well as "lifestyle revolutionaries". In Moore's description, the album "seems to have spoken (in a way no other has) for its generation". An educator referenced in a July 1967 "New York Times" article was reported to have said on the topic of music studies and its relevance to the day's youth: "If you want to know what youths are thinking and feeling... you cannot find anyone who speaks for them or to them more clearly than the Beatles."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" was the focus of much celebration by the counterculture. American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg said of the album: "After the apocalypse of Hitler and the apocalypse of the Bomb, there was here an exclamation of joy, the rediscovery of joy and what it is to be alive." The American psychologist and counterculture figure Timothy Leary labelled the Beatles "avatars of the new world order" and said that the LP "gave a voice to the feeling that the old ways were over" by stressing the need for cultural change based on a peaceful agenda. According to author Michael Frontani, the Beatles "legitimiz[ed] the lifestyle of the counterculture", just as they did popular music, and formed the basis of Jann Wenner's scope on these issues when launching "Rolling Stone" magazine in late 1967. Further to Lennon wearing an Afghan sheepskin coat at the album launch party, "Afghans" became a popular garment among hippies, and Westerners increasingly sought out the coats on the hippie trail in Afghanistan.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: McCartney's LSD admission formalised the link between rock music and drugs, and attracted scorn from American religious leaders and conservatives. Vice-president Spiro Agnew contended that the "friends" referred to in "With a Little Help from My Friends" were "assorted drugs". As part of an escalating national debate that triggered an investigation by the US Congress, he launched a campaign in 1970 to address the issue of American youth being "brainwashed" into taking drugs through the music of the Beatles and other rock artists. In the UK, according to historian David Simonelli, the album's obvious drug allusions inspired a hierarchy within the youth movement for the first time, based on listeners' ability to "get" psychedelia and align with the elite notion of Romantic artistry. Harrison was eager to separate the message of "Within You Without You" from the LSD experience, telling an interviewer: "It's nothing to do with pills... It's just in your own head, the realisation."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The Beatles' presentation as Sgt. Pepper's band resonated at a time when many young people in the UK and the US were seeking to redefine their own identity and were drawn to communities that espoused the transformational power of mind-altering drugs. In the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, the recognised centre of the counterculture, "Sgt. Pepper" was viewed as a "code for life", according to music journalist Alan Clayson, with street people such as the Merry Band of Pranksters offering "Beatle readings". American social activist Abbie Hoffman credited the album as his inspiration for staging the attempted levitation of the Pentagon during the Mobe's anti-Vietnam War rally in October 1967. The Byrds' David Crosby later expressed surprise that by 1970 the album's powerful sentiments had not been enough to stop the Vietnam War.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" informed Frank Zappa's parody of the counterculture and flower power on the Mothers of Invention's 1968 album "We're Only in It for the Money". By 1968, according to music critic Greil Marcus, "Sgt. Pepper" appeared shallow against the emotional backdrop of the political and social upheavals of American life. Simon Frith, in his overview of 1967 for "The History of Rock", said that "Sgt. Pepper" "defined the year" by conveying the optimism and sense of empowerment at the centre of the youth movement. He added that the Velvet Underground's "The Velvet Underground & Nico" – an album that contrasted sharply with the Beatles' message by "offer[ing] no escape" – became more relevant in a cultural climate typified by "the Sex Pistols, the new political aggression, the rioting in the streets" during the 1970s. In a 1987 review for "Q" magazine, Charles Shaar Murray asserted that "Sgt. Pepper" "remains a central pillar of the mythology and iconography of the late '60s",<ref name="CSM/Q"></ref> while Colin Larkin states in his "Encyclopedia of Popular Music": "[it] turned out to be no mere pop album but a cultural icon, embracing the constituent elements of the 60s' youth culture: pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In "The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature", Kevin Dettmar writes that "Sgt. Pepper" achieved "a combination of popular success and critical acclaim unequaled in twentieth-century art... never before had an aesthetic and technical masterpiece enjoyed such popularity." Through the level of attention it received from the rock press and more culturally elite publications, the album achieved full cultural legitimisation for pop music and recognition for the medium as a genuine art form. Riley says that pop had been due this accreditation "at least as early as "A Hard Day's Night"" in 1964. He adds that the timing of the album's release and its reception ensured that ""Sgt. Pepper" has attained the kind of populist adoration that renowned works often assume regardless of their larger significance – it's the Beatles' 'Mona Lisa'." At the 10th Annual Grammy Awards in March 1968, "Sgt. Pepper" won awards in four categories: Album of the Year; Best Contemporary Album; Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical; and Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts. Its win in the Album of the Year category marked the first time that a rock LP had received this honour.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Among the recognised composers who helped legitimise the Beatles as serious musicians at the time were Luciano Berio, Aaron Copland, John Cage, Ned Rorem and Leonard Bernstein. According to Rodriguez, an element of exaggeration accompanied some of the acclaim for "Sgt. Pepper", with particularly effusive approbation coming from Rorem, Bernstein and Tynan, "as if every critic was seeking to outdo the other for the most lavish embrace of the Beatles' new direction". In Gendron's view, the cultural approbation represented American "highbrow" commentators (Rorem and Poirier) looking to establish themselves over their "low-middlebrow" equivalent, after "Time" and "Newsweek" had led the way in recognising the Beatles' artistry, and over the new discipline of rock criticism. Gendron describes the discourse as one whereby, during a period that lasted for six months, "highbrow" composers and musicologists "jostl[ed] to pen the definitive effusive appraisal of the Beatles".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Aside from the attention afforded the album in literary and scholarly journals, the American jazz magazines "Down Beat" and "Jazz" both began to cover rock music for the first time, with the latter changing its name to "Jazz & Pop" as a result. In addition, following "Sgt. Pepper", established American publications such as "Vogue", "Playboy" and the "San Francisco Chronicle" started discussing rock as art, in terms usually reserved for jazz criticism. Writing for "Rolling Stone" in 1969, Michael Lydon said that reviewers had had to invent "new criticism" to match pop's musical advances, since: "Writing had to be an appropriate response to the music; in writing about, say, "Sgt. Pepper", you had to try to write something as good as "Sgt. Pepper". Because, of course, what made that record beautiful was the beautiful response it created in you; if your written response was true to your listening response, the writing would stand on its own as a creation on par with the record."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Through its acceptance by "serious" composers, according to Schaffner, "Sgt. Pepper" satisfied the ambitions of a staid, middle-age American audience keen to be seen as in tune with young people's tastes, and every major rock LP was subsequently given the same level of critical analysis. In 1977, the LP won Best British Album at the inaugural Brit Awards, held by the BPI to celebrate the best British music of the last 25 years as part of Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. When EMI issued the Beatles' catalogue on CD in 1987, "Sgt. Pepper" was the only album afforded a dedicated release. EMI marketed it as "the most important record ever released on compact disc".<ref name="Petridis/Guardian"></ref>


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Julien describes "Sgt. Pepper" as a "masterpiece of British psychedelia" and says that it represents the "epitome of the transformation of the recording studio into a compositional tool", marking the moment when "popular music entered the era of phonographic composition". Many acts copied the album's psychedelic sounds and imitated its production techniques, resulting in a rapid expansion of the producer's role. In this regard, Lennon and McCartney complained that Martin had received too much attention for his part in the album's creation, so beginning a feeling of resentment by the Beatles towards their longtime producer.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In 1987, Anthony DeCurtis of "Rolling Stone" described "Sgt. Pepper" as the album that "revolutionized rock and roll", while music journalists Andy Greene and Scott Plagenhoef credit it with marking the beginning of the album era. For several years following its release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form, and for the first time in the history of the music industry, sales of albums outpaced those of singles. In Gould's description, "Sgt. Pepper" was "the catalyst for an explosion of mass enthusiasm for album-formatted rock that would revolutionize both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far out-stripped the earlier pop explosions triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963". The music industry swiftly grew into a billion-dollar enterprise, although record company executives were blindsided by the appeal of new acts who defied established formulas.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Music critic Greg Kot said that "Sgt. Pepper" introduced a template not only for creating album-oriented rock but also for consuming it, "with listeners no longer twisting the night away to an assortment of three-minute singles, but losing themselves in a succession of 20-minute album sides, taking a journey led by the artist". In Moore's view, the album was "pivotal" in heralding "the realignment of rock from its working-class roots to its subsequent place on the college circuit", as students increasingly embraced the genre and record companies launched labels targeted towards this new market. As another result of "Sgt. Pepper", US record companies no longer altered the content of albums by major British acts such as the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and Donovan, and their LPs were released in the artists' intended configuration.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: According to Simonelli, "Sgt. Pepper" established the standard for rock musicians, particularly British acts, to strive towards in their self-identification as artists rather than pop stars, whereby, as in the Romantic tradition, creative vision dominated at the expense of all commercial concerns. In the US, the album paved the way for British groups such as Pink Floyd and the Incredible String Band, whose work echoed the eclectic, mystical and escapist qualities of "Sgt. Pepper".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Following the Beatles' example, many acts spent months in the studio creating their albums, focused on an artistic aesthetic and in the hope of winning critical approval. Among the many LPs influenced by "Sgt. Pepper" were Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing at Baxter's", the Rolling Stones' "Their Satanic Majesties Request" and the Moody Blues' "Days of Future Passed", all released in 1967; and the Zombies' "Odessey and Oracle", the Small Faces' "Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake" and the Pretty Things' "S.F. Sorrow", all issued the following year.<ref name="Chilton/uDiscover"></ref> All rock albums were subsequently measured against "Sgt. Pepper". Discussing "Their Satanic Majesties Request", Wenner referred to "the post–"Sgt. Pepper" trap of trying to put out a 'progressive,' 'significant' and 'different' album, as revolutionary as the Beatles. But it couldn't be done, because only the Beatles can put out an album by the Beatles."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "The Guardian" viewed the album's effect on Carla Bley as one of the "50 key events in the history of dance music".<ref name="Lewis/Guardian"></ref> Bley spent four years crafting her musical response to "Sgt. Pepper" – the 1971 avant-jazz triple album "Escalator Over the Hill" – which combined rock, Indo-jazz fusion and chamber jazz. Roger Waters cited "Sgt. Pepper" as his influence when Pink Floyd created their 1973 album "The Dark Side of the Moon", saying: "I learned from Lennon, McCartney and Harrison that it was OK for us to write about our lives and express what we felt... More than any other record it gave me and my generation permission to branch out and do whatever we wanted."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Over subsequent decades, musical acts referred to their major artistic work as "our "Sgt. Pepper"". In this regard, "Mojo" magazine recognises Prince's "Around the World in a Day" (1985), Tears for Fears' "The Seeds of Love" (1989), Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (1995), Radiohead's "OK Computer" (1997), Oasis' "Be Here Now" (1997) and the Flaming Lips' "The Soft Bulletin" (1999) as albums that "for better or for worse... would not have existed" without "Sgt. Pepper". Writing for "Mojo" in 2007, John Harris said that the album's influence resonates in the "identity games" of Gnarls Barkley, in the ambitious song cycle of Green Day's 2004 album "American Idiot", in the respect afforded adventurous musicians such as Damon Albarn and Wayne Coyne, and particularly in the audience's expectation that foremost artists will "progress" and perhaps "ascend to a watershed point at which influence, experience and ambition cohere into something that just might blow our minds".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" was highly influential on bands in the US acid rock (or psychedelic rock) scene. Lavezzoli views it as a key factor in 1967's standing as the ""annus mirabilis"" for Indian classical music's acceptance in the West, with the genre having been fully absorbed into psychedelic music. "Sgt. Pepper" is commonly recognised as having originated progressive rock, due to the album's self-conscious lyrics, its studio experimentation, and its efforts to expand the barriers of conventional three-minute tracks. In addition to influencing Pink Floyd records such as "Atom Heart Mother", it was a source of inspiration for Robert Fripp when he formed King Crimson.<ref name="Hughes/Prog"></ref> The band's 1969 debut "In the Court of the Crimson King" was intended as a homage to "Sgt. Pepper".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: MacFarlane writes that, despite concerns regarding its thematic unity, "Sgt. Pepper" "is widely regarded as the first true concept album in popular music". According to author Martina Elicker, despite earlier examples, it was "Sgt. Pepper" that familiarised critics and listeners with the notion of a "concept and unified structure underlying a pop album", thus originating the term "concept album". Further to "Sgt. Pepper", musicians increasingly explored literary and sociological themes in their concept albums and adopted its anti-establishment sentiments. It also inspired rock opera works such as the Who's double album "Tommy" and the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Author Carys Wyn Jones locates "Pet Sounds" and "Sgt. Pepper" as the beginning of art rock. Doyle Greene says that "Sgt. Pepper" provides a "crucial locus in the assemblage of popular music and avant-garde/experimental music", notwithstanding the Beatles' presentation of the latter within formal song structures. He also says that, although the band are usually viewed as modernists, the album "can be heard as a crucial "postmodernist" moment", through its incorporation of self-conscious artistry, irony and pastiche, and "arguably marked rock music's entry into postmodernism as opposed to high-modernism". During the 1970s, glam rock acts co-opted the Beatles' use of alter ego personas, including David Bowie when he adopted the guise of Ziggy Stardust.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Inglis states that almost every account of the significance of "Sgt. Pepper" emphasises the cover's "unprecedented correspondence between music and art, time and space". The cover helped to elevate album art as a respected topic for critical analysis whereby the "structures and cultures of popular music" could henceforth justify intellectual discourse in a way that – before "Sgt. Pepper" – would have seemed like "fanciful conceit". He writes: "[The "Sgt. Pepper"] cover has been regarded as groundbreaking in its visual and aesthetic properties, congratulated for its innovative and imaginative design, credited with providing an early impetus for the expansion of the graphic design industry into popular music, and perceived as largely responsible for the connections between art and pop to be made explicit."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" contributed to the popular trend for military-style fashions as adopted by London's boutique shops. Following the LP's release, rock acts afforded cover art greater consideration and increasingly sought to create a thematic link between their album artwork and the record's musical statements. Riley describes the cover as "one of the best-known works that pop art ever produced", while Norman calls it "the most famous album cover of all time". The Beatles' 1968 self-titled double LP became known as the White Album for its plain white sleeve, which the band chose as a contrast with the wave of psychedelic imagery and album covers inspired by "Sgt. Pepper". In the late 1990s, the BBC included the "Sgt. Pepper" cover in its list of British masterpieces of twentieth-century art and design, placing it ahead of the red telephone box, Mary Quant's miniskirt, and the Mini motorcar.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Although few critics initially agreed with Richard Goldstein's criticism of the album, many came to appreciate his sentiments by the early 1980s. In his 1979 book "Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island", Greil Marcus described "Sgt. Pepper" as "playful but contrived" and "a Day-Glo tombstone for its time". Marcus believed that the album "strangled on its own conceits" while being "vindicated by world-wide acclaim". Lester Bangs – the so-called "godfather" of punk rock journalism – wrote in 1981 that "Goldstein was right in his much-vilified review ... predicting that this record had the power to almost singlehandedly destroy rock and roll." He added: "In the sixties rock and roll began to think of itself as an 'art form'. Rock and roll is not an 'art form'; rock and roll is a raw wail from the bottom of the guts."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In a 1976 article for "The Village Voice", Christgau revisited the "supposedly epochal Works of Art" from 1967 and found that "Sgt. Pepper" appeared "bound to a moment" amid the year's culturally important music that had "dated in the sense that it speaks with unusually specific eloquence of a single point in history". Christgau said of the album's "dozen good songs and true", "Perhaps they're too precisely performed, but I'm not going to complain." In his 1981 assessment, Simon Frith described "Sgt. Pepper" as "the last great pop album, the last LP ambitious to amuse ".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Once the Beatles' catalogue became available on CD in 1987, a critical consensus formed around "Revolver" standing as the band's best work; the White Album also surpassed "Sgt. Pepper" in many critics' estimation.<ref name="Quantick/ClassicRock"></ref> In his feature article on "Sgt. Pepper" 40th anniversary, for "Mojo", John Harris said that, such was its "seismic and universal" impact and subsequent identification with 1967, a "fashion for trashing" the album had become commonplace. He attributed this to iconoclasm, as successive generations identified the album with baby boomers' retreat into "nostalgia-tinged smugness" during the 1970s, combined with a general distaste for McCartney following Lennon's death. Citing its absence from the "NME" best-albums list in 1985 after it had topped the magazine's previous poll, in 1974, Harris wrote:


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Though by no means universally degraded... "Sgt. Pepper" had taken a protracted beating from which it has perhaps yet to fully recover. Regularly challenged and overtaken in the Best Beatle Album stakes... it suffered more than any Beatles record from the long fall-out after punk, and even the band's Britpop-era revival mysteriously failed to improve its standing.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: Writing in the 2004 edition of "The Rolling Stone Album Guide", Rob Sheffield described "Sgt. Pepper" as "a revelation of how far artists could go in a recording studio with only four tracks, plenty of imagination, and a drug or two", but also "a masterwork of sonics, not songwriting". In his review for Rough Guides, Chris Ingham said that, while the album's detractors typically bemoan McCartney's dominant role, the reliance on studio innovation, and the unconvincing concept, "as long as there are pairs of ears willing to disappear under headphones for forty minutes... "Sgt. Pepper" will continue to cast its considerable spell." Among reviews of the 2009 remastered album, Neil McCormick of "The Daily Telegraph" wrote: "It is impossible to overstate its impact: from a contemporary Sixties perspective it was utterly mind-blowing and original. Looking back from a point when its sonic innovations have been integrated into the mainstream, it remains a wonky, colourful and wildly improbable pop classic, although a little slighter and less cohesive than it may have seemed at the time." Mark Kemp, writing for "Paste", said the album was a "blast of avant-rock genius" but also "one of rock's most overrated albums".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: According to BBC Music critic Chris Jones, while "Sgt. Pepper" has long been subsumed under "an avalanche of hyperbole", the album retains an enduring quality "because its sum is greater than its whole... These guys weren't just recording songs; they were inventing the stuff with which to make this record as they went along." Although the lyrics, particularly McCartney's, were "a far cry from the militancy of their American peers", he continues, "what was revolutionary was the sonic carpet that enveloped the ears and sent the listener spinning into other realms." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic considers the album to be a refinement of "Revolver" "previously unheard-of level of sophistication and fearless experimentation" and a work that combines a wide range of musical styles yet "Not once does the diversity seem forced". He concludes: "After "Sgt. Pepper", there were no rules to follow – rock and pop bands could try anything, for better or worse."


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" sustained its immense popularity into the 21st century while breaking numerous sales records. With certified sales of 5.1 million copies in the UK, as of April 2019, "Sgt. Pepper" is the third-best-selling album in UK chart history and the best-selling studio album there. It is one of the most commercially successful albums in the US, where the RIAA certified sales of 11 million copies in 1997. By 2000, "Sgt. Pepper" was among the top 20 best-selling albums of all time worldwide. As of 2011, it had sold more than 32 million copies worldwide, making it one of the highest-selling albums of all time.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" has topped many "best album" lists. It was voted in first place in Paul Gambaccini's 1978 book "", based on submissions from around 50 British and American critics and broadcasters including Christgau and Marcus, and again in the 1987 edition. In the latter year, it also topped "Rolling Stone" list of "The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years". In 1994, it was ranked first in Colin Larkin's "All Time Top 1000 Albums". It was voted best album of all time in the 1998 "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV and Channel 4, and in the following year's expanded survey, which polled 600,000 people across the UK. Among its appearances in other critics' polls, the album was third in "Q" 2004 list "The Music That Changed the World" and fifth in the same magazine's 2005 list "The 40 Greatest Psychedelic Albums of All Time".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In 1993, "Sgt. Pepper" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and ten years later it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, honouring the work as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2003, "Rolling Stone" placed it at number one in the magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", a ranking it retained in the revised list of 2012, and described the album as "the pinnacle of the Beatles' eight years as recording artists". The editors also said that "Sgt. Pepper" was "the most important rock 'n' roll album ever made", a point to which June Skinner Sawyers adds, in her 2006 collection of essays "Read the Beatles": "It has been called the most famous album in the history of popular music. It is certainly among the most written about. It is still being written about." On "Rolling Stone" third such list, published in September 2020, "Sgt. Pepper" appears at number 24.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: In 2006, "Sgt. Pepper" was chosen by "Time" as one of the 100 best albums of all time. Writing that year, Kevin Dettmar described it as "quite simply, the most important and influential rock-and-roll album ever recorded". It is featured in Chris Smith's 2009 book "101 Albums That Changed Popular Music", where Smith highlights the album among the most "obvious" choices for inclusion due to its continued commercial success, the wealth of imitative works it inspired, and its ongoing recognition as "a defining moment in the history of music". In the "NME" 2014 article "25 Albums With the Most Incredible Production", Emily Barker described "Sgt. Pepper" as "kaleidoscopic" and an "orchestral baroque pop masterpiece the likes of which has rarely been matched since".


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The Sgt. Pepper mythology was reimagined for the plot of "Yellow Submarine". In the animated film, the Beatles travel to Pepperland and rescue Sgt. Pepper's band from evildoers, the Blue Meanies. The album inspired the 1974 off-Broadway musical "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road", directed by Tom O'Horgan, and the 1978 film "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", produced by Robert Stigwood. In July 2012, athletes donned Sgt. Pepper uniforms to pay tribute to the Beatles' album during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: "Sgt. Pepper" has been the subject of many tribute albums, including a multi-artist CD available with the March 2007 issue of "Mojo" and a 2009 live album, "Sgt. Pepper Live", by Cheap Trick. Other tribute recordings include "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father", a multi-artist charity compilation released by the "NME" in 1988; Big Daddy's 1992 album "Sgt. Pepper's", which Moore recognises as "the most audacious" of all the interpretations of the Beatles' LP up to 1997; and the Flaming Lips' "With a Little Help from My Fwends", released in 2014. BBC Radio 2 broadcast "Sgt. Pepper's 40th Anniversary" in June 2007. The programme contained new versions of the songs by artists such as Oasis, the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs, produced by Emerick using EMI's original four-track recording equipment.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: The 1987 CD release attracted considerable media interest and coincided with a Granada TV documentary, "It Was Twenty Years Ago Today", that located the album at the centre of the Summer of Love.<ref name="Jensen/UPI"></ref> The reissue peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart and topped "Billboard" CDs chart. The album's 25th anniversary was observed with "The South Bank Show" presentation of Martin's TV documentary "The Making of Sgt. Pepper", which included interviews with the three surviving Beatles. Although there was no official campaign for the 30th anniversary, BBC Radio 2 broadcast "Pepper Forever" in the UK and some 12,000 schools across the US listened to a radio special dedicated to the album on 2 June 1997. Aside from Radio 2's June 2007 project, the 40th anniversary was marked by the University of Leeds hosting a meeting of British and American commentators to debate the extent of the album's social and cultural impact.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: On 26 May 2017, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was as a six-disc box set. The first CD contains a new stereo remix of the album, created by Giles Martin using first-generation tapes rather than their subsequent mixdowns. Apple Corps produced the TV documentary "Sgt. Pepper's Musical Revolution" to commemorate the anniversary, which was also celebrated with posters, billboards and other decorations in cities around the world. In Liverpool, the anniversary was the focus of a three-week cultural festival that included events dedicated to each of the album's thirteen songs.<ref name="Kennedy/Guardian"></ref> As part of the festival, Mark Morris choreographed "Pepperland" to four of the songs from "Sgt. Pepper" and "Penny Lane", arranged by Ethan Iverson, plus six original compositions by Iverson, and a dawn-to-dusk celebration of Indian music was held in recognition of Harrison's absorption in the genre. The 50th anniversary edition of "Sgt. Pepper" topped the UK Albums Chart.


title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

text: All songs written by Lennon–McCartney, except "Within You Without You" by George Harrison. Track lengths and lead vocals per Mark Lewisohn and Ian MacDonald.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (born 9 January 1955) is an Indian diplomat and politician serving as the Minister of External Affairs of the Government of India since 30 May 2019. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha since 5 July 2019, representing Gujarat. He previously served as the Foreign Secretary from January 2015 to January 2018.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1977 and during his diplomatic career spanning over 38 years, he served in different capacities in India and abroad including as a High Commissioner to Singapore (2007–09) and as Ambassador to the Czech Republic (2001–04), China (2009–2013) and the US (2014–2015). Jaishankar played a key role in negotiating the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: On retirement, Jaishankar joined Tata Sons as the President, Global Corporate Affairs. In 2019, he was conferred with Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour. On 30 May 2019, he was sworn in as a cabinet minister in the second Modi ministry. He was made the Minister of External Affairs on 31 May 2019. He is the first former Foreign Secretary to head the Ministry of External Affairs as the Cabinet Minister.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar was born in a Tamil family in New Delhi, India to prominent Indian strategic affairs analyst, commentator and civil servant K. Subrahmanyam and Sulochana Subrahmanyam. He has two brothers: the historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam and the IAS officer S. Vijay Kumar, former Rural Development Secretary of India.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar did his schooling from The Air Force School, Subroto Park, New Delhi, and is a graduate in Chemistry from St. Stephen's College at the University of Delhi. He has an MA in Political Science and an M.Phil. and PhD in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where he specialised in nuclear diplomacy.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: After joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1977, Jaishankar served as third secretary and second secretary in the Indian mission to the Soviet Union in Moscow from 1979 to 1981, where he studied Russian. He returned to New Delhi, where he worked as a special assistant to the diplomat Gopalaswami Parthasarathy and as undersecretary in the Americas division of India's Ministry of External Affairs, dealing with United States. He was part of the team that resolved the dispute over the supply of US nuclear fuel to the Tarapur Power Stations in India. From 1985 to 1988 he was the first secretary at the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: From 1988 to 1990, he served in Sri Lanka as First Secretary and political adviser to the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF). From 1990 to 1993, he was Counsellor (Commercial) at the Indian mission in Budapest. Returning to New Delhi, he served as Director (East Europe) in the Ministry of External Affairs and as press secretary and speechwriter for President of India Shankar Dayal Sharma.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar was then Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Tokyo from 1996 to 2000. This period saw a downturn in Indo-Japan relations following India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests as well as a recovery after a visit to India by then Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. Jaishankar is reported to have helped introduce future Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe to his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh. In 2000, he was appointed India's ambassador to the Czech Republic.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: From 2004 to 2007, Jaishankar was Joint Secretary (Americas) at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. In this capacity, he was involved in negotiating the US-India civil nuclear agreement and improving defence co-operation, including during relief operations following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Jaishankar was also involved with the conclusion of the 2005 New Defense Framework and the Open Skies Agreement, and he was associated with the launch of the US-India Energy Dialogue, the India-US Economic Dialogue, and the India-US CEO's Forum. In 2006–2007, Jaishankar led the Indian team during the negotiations on the 123 Agreement with United States. He also represented the Indian government at the Carnegie Endowment International Non-proliferation Conference in June 2007.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: From 2007 to 2009, Jaishankar served as India's High Commissioner to Singapore. During his tenure, he helped implement the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) that expanded the Indian business presence in Singapore, and oversaw a defence arrangement by which Singapore keeps some of its military equipment in India on a permanent basis. Jaishankar also promoted the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, and IIMPact in Singapore.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar was India's longest-serving ambassador to China, with a four-and-a-half-year term. In Beijing, Jaishankar was involved in improving economic, trade and cultural relations between China and India, and in managing the Sino-Indian border dispute.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar's tenure as India's ambassador to China coincided with several major developments in relations between the two countries. His 2010 briefing to the Indian Cabinet Committee on Security regarding China's refusal to issue a visa to the head of the Indian Army’s Northern Command led to a suspension of Indian defence co-operation with China, before the situation was resolved in April 2011. Also in 2010, Jaishankar negotiated an end to the Chinese policy of issuing stapled visas to Indians from Jammu and Kashmir. In 2012, in response to Chinese passports showing Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as parts of China, he ordered visas issued to Chinese nationals showing those territories as parts of India. And in May 2013, he negotiated the end of a stand-off resulting from the encampment by China's People's Liberation Army on Ladakh’s Depsang Plains, threatening to cancel Premier Li Keqiang’s scheduled visit to India if Chinese forces did not withdraw ("See also" 2013 Daulat Beg Oldi Incident). Jaishankar also briefed the media after the conclusion of Li's visit to New Delhi in May 2013.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar advocated deeper Indian co-operation with China as long as India's "core interests" were respected, and argued for better market access for Indian businesses operating in China on the grounds that more balanced trade was necessary for the bilateral economic relationship to be sustainable. He was also involved in improving people-to-people contacts between India and China, promoting events that showcased Indian culture in 30 Chinese cities.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar was appointed as India's Ambassador to United States in September 2013. He took charge on 23 December 2013 succeeding Nirupama Rao. He arrived in United States amid the Devyani Khobragade incident, and was involved in negotiating the Indian diplomat's departure from United States. On 29 January 2014, Jaishankar addressed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he argued that "the grand strategy underwriting [Indian-American] ties is fundamentally sound" but that ties suffered from a "problem of sentiment."


title: S. Jaishankar

text: On 10 March 2014, he formally presented his credentials to US President Barack Obama at the Oval Office.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar was involved in planning of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's maiden visit to United States in September 2014, welcoming him upon his arrival and hosting a dinner in his honour for members of the Indian-American community.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar was appointed as Foreign Secretary of India on 29 January 2015. The announcement of his appointment was made following a 28 January 2015 meeting of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Jaishankar is widely credited by Nepalese analysts for being the "original planner of 2015 Nepal blockade".


title: S. Jaishankar

text: On 31 May 2019, he was appointed to the Office of Minister of External Affairs. Jaishankar was sworn in as Cabinet minister on 30 May 2019.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: On 5 July 2019, he was elected as Member of Parliament from Bharatiya Janata Party to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat state. He succeeded late Sushma Swaraj who was the External Affairs Minister in Narendra Modi's Government in his first stint.


title: S. Jaishankar

text: In October 2020, Jaishankar and the Indian Minister of Defence, Rajnath Singh met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper to sign the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geospatial Cooperation (BECA), which facilitates the sharing of sensitive information and intelligence—including access to highly-accurate nautical, aeronautical, topographical, and geospatial data—between United States and India. The agreement had been under discussion for over a decade, but previous concerns over information security impelled the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government to block it. In response to the dialogue, Chinese spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Wang Wenbin criticised the move and advised Pompeo to "abandon his Cold War mentality, zero-sum mindset, and stop harping on the 'China threat.'"


title: S. Jaishankar

text: Jaishankar is married to Kyoko, who is of Japanese origin and has two sons—Dhruva and Arjun—and a daughter, Medha. He speaks Russian, English, Tamil, Hindi, conversational Japanese, Chinese and some Hungarian.


title: Made in Abyss

text: An anime television series adaptation produced by Kinema Citrus, aired from July to September 2017. A sequel film, subtitled "Dawn of the Deep Soul", premiered in Japan in January 2020. A second season, titled "Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun", aired from July to September 2022.


title: Made in Abyss

text: A live-action film adaptation began development in 2021, with Kevin McMullin hired to write and direct. An action role-playing game developed by Chime Corporation and published by Spike Chunsoft was released in September 2022.


title: Made in Abyss

text: An orphaned girl named Riko lives in the Belchero Orphanage in the town of Orth. The town surrounds a strange, giant hole descending deep into the earth, which is known as the Abyss. The Abyss harbors artifacts and remnants of civilizations long gone, and is, therefore, a popular hunting spot for so-called Cave Raiders, who undertake arduous and dangerous descents into the mist-filled pit to recover whatever relics they can find. Returning from the Abyss can be dangerous as "the Curse of the Abyss," a mysterious and potentially fatal malady, manifests upon ascension. The deeper one goes, the more acute the effects of the curse; few who have descended into the lower regions have returned to tell of their experiences. Some legendary Cave Raiders earn the title of White Whistles, one of them being Riko's mother, Lyza, who is presumed dead after taking a "last descent" into the Abyss.


title: Made in Abyss

text: Riko's longing in life is to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a White Whistle. One day, she discovers a half-human/half-robot boy in the first layer of the Abyss and names him Reg (after a dog that Riko owned). Riko and her friends sneak Reg into Belchero and quickly welcome him into their close-knit group. Sometime later, a number of findings are made from the depths of the Abyss, including Lyza’s White Whistle and pages of discoveries and observations she had made, as well as a message presumably for Riko, stating she is waiting at the bottom of the Abyss. Riko, determined to find her mother, bids farewell to her friends and secretly departs into the Abyss with Reg as her companion.


title: Made in Abyss

text: Written and illustrated by Akihito Tsukushi, "Made in Abyss" started on Takeshobo's "Manga Life Win+" (later "Web Comic Gamma") website on October 20, 2012. Takeshobo has collected its chapters into individual "tankōbon" volumes. The first volume was released on July 31, 2013. As of July 29, 2022, eleven volumes have been released.


title: Made in Abyss

text: In North America, Seven Seas Entertainment announced during their panel at Anime Expo 2017 that they had licensed the manga.


title: Made in Abyss

text: The translator of the anime for Sentai Filmworks, Jake Jung, also adapted the manga for Seven Seas Entertainment. Regarding his involvement in the English version of both media, he stated, ""Made in Abyss" is chock-full of terminology, so I hope fans of both media are able to enjoy a seamless experience." In addition, he has confirmed his intention to avoid gendered pronouns for both Nanachi and Marulk.


title: Made in Abyss

text: A manga anthology, titled "", was released on July 29, 2017. On December 13, 2019, Seven Seas announced they had licensed the book, and they released it on October 6, 2020. As of July 2021, a total of four anthologies have been published.


title: Made in Abyss

text: An anime television series adaptation was announced in December 2016. The 13-episode series aired from July 7 to September 29, 2017 on AT-X, Tokyo MX, TV Aichi, Sun TV, KBS Kyoto, TVQ, Saga TV, and BS11, and covers content from volumes 1 through 3. The final episode was a 1-hour long special. The series was directed by Masayuki Kojima and written by Hideyuki Kurata, with animation by Kinema Citrus and character designs by Kazuchika Kise. Australian artist Kevin Penkin composed the soundtrack for the anime. Miyu Tomita and Mariya Ise, the voice actresses for Riko and Reg, respectively, performed both the opening theme "Deep in Abyss" and the ending theme "Tabi no Hidarite, Saihate no Migite", the latter in collaboration with Shiori Izawa (Nanachi). The first season premiered on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block on January 16, 2022.


title: Made in Abyss

text: Two compilation films, titled (encompassing episodes 1–8 with new scenes for introduction) and (encompassing episodes 9-13), were released on January 4, 2019 and January 18, 2019, respectively. A sequel was announced at an event in November 2017.


title: Made in Abyss

text: Following the release of the first compilation film, the sequel was revealed to be a film titled . The film premiered in Japan on January 17, 2020. The film had been set to premiere in the United States at Anime Boston on April 11, 2020 before that convention's cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Regular theater showings in the U.S. had been planned for April 13 (English dub) and 15 (English subtitles).


title: Made in Abyss

text: Following the release of "Dawn of the Deep Soul", a new sequel was announced. On May 5, 2021, it was announced that the sequel was a second season, officially titled , which aired from July 6 to September 28, 2022. The main cast and staff reprised their roles. Riko Azuna performed the opening theme "Katachi", while Myth & Roid performed the ending theme "Endless Embrace".


title: Made in Abyss

text: Sentai Filmworks has licensed the series, and streamed it on Amazon's Anime Strike service in the U.S. and on HIDIVE outside of the U.S. Sentai has since released it on home video with an English dub. MVM Films has acquired the series for distribution in the UK and Ireland, and Madman Entertainment has acquired the series for distribution in Australia and New Zealand. Sentai Filmworks has licensed the two compilation films, and screened the first film at Regal Cinemas in Los Angeles on March 15, 2019, with a subtitled theatrical release on March 20, 2019, and an English dubbed theatrical release on March 25, 2019, in collaboration with Fathom Events. During its panel at Anime Expo on July 5, 2019, Sentai Filmworks announced that they had acquired the license for "Dawn of the Deep Soul". Sentai Filmworks planned to screen the film in North America, the United Kingdom, and Ireland with English subtitles on April 13, 2020 subtitled, and with the English dub on April 15, 2020. However, the screenings were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sentai Filmworks also acquired the second season for distribution worldwide except Asia, France, Germany, Italy and Middle East and North Africa, and streamed it on select digital outlets.


title: Made in Abyss

text: An action role-playing game, titled , was developed by Chime Corporation and published by Spike Chunsoft, with Numskull Games publishing the physical versions in Europe. It is fully voiced in English and Japanese and features an original story supervised by Tsukushi. The game was released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows on September 1, 2022 in Japan, and the following day in North America and Europe.


title: Made in Abyss

text: In June 2021, Sony's Columbia Pictures announced that a live-action film adaptation was in development. The film will be produced by Roy Lee and Masi Oka and adapted by Kevin McMullin.


title: Made in Abyss

text: "Made in Abyss" was nominated for the 11th Manga Taishō awards and received a total of 40 points, coming in at eighth place. The series ranked 13th on "Kono Manga ga Sugoi!"'s top 20 manga for male readers 2018. It was nominated for the French 12th ACBD's Prix Asie de la Critique 2018. As of February 2020, the manga had over 3 million copies in circulation.


title: Made in Abyss

text: "Made in Abyss" has been met with positive reviews and is widely considered to be one of the best anime series of the 2010s. Crunchyroll listed the series in their "Top 100 best anime of the 2010s". "IGN" also listed it among the best anime series of the 2010s. It was one of the Jury Recommended Works in the Animation Division at the 21st Japan Media Arts Festival.


title: Made in Abyss

text: Nick Creamer of "Anime News Network" praised the anime for being adventure-focused, as well as its efficiency in establishing its premise. Creamer also praises it for its artwork and music that highlights the beauty and terror of the Abyss. Julian Malerman of "THEM Anime Reviews" praises the show for being a well-executed emotional drama saying "The manner in which the show approaches this conclusion is often brutal and alienating, but the final answer is simple and pure. It sings."


title: Made in Abyss

text: "Made in Abyss" was awarded Anime of the Year and Best Score at the 2nd Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2018. The series won the 2018 "Anime Trending Awards" in the Best in Adaptation, Best in Soundtrack and Action or Adventure Anime of the Year, and was nominated for several other categories. It also won the 25th Spanish Manga Barcelona award for the Best Anime category in 2019.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup is scheduled to be the ninth edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup competition, the quadrennial international women's football championship contested by the women's national association football teams organised by FIFA. The tournament will be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand and is scheduled to take place from 20 July to 20 August 2023; it will be the first FIFA Women's World Cup to have more than one host nation, and also be the first senior World Cup of either gender to be held across multiple confederations, as Australia is within the Asian Confederation while New Zealand is within the Oceania Confederation. In addition, this tournament will be the first to feature the expanded format of 32 teams, from previous 24, replicating the same format used for the men's World Cup. The opening match will be contested between New Zealand and Norway at Eden Park, Auckland on 20 July 2023. The final will take place on 20 August 2023 at Stadium Australia, Sydney. The United States are the defending champions, having won the previous two tournaments.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: Bidding began for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup on 19 February 2019. Member associations interested in hosting the tournament had to submit a declaration of interest by 15 March, and provide the completed bidding registration by 16 April. However, FIFA revised the bidding timeline as the tournament expanded to 32 teams on 31 July. Other member associations interested in hosting the tournament now had until 16 August to submit a declaration of interest, while the completed bidding registration of new member associations and re-confirmation of prior bidders was due by 2 September.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: Nine countries initially indicated interest in hosting the events: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Japan, South Korea (with interest in a joint bid with North Korea), New Zealand and South Africa. Belgium expressed interest in hosting the tournament following the new deadline but later dropped out with Bolivia in September 2019. Australia and New Zealand later announced they would merge their bids in a joint submission. Brazil, Colombia, and Japan joined them in submitting their bid books to FIFA by 13 December. However, both Brazil and Japan later withdrew their bids in June 2020 before the final voting.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: On 25 June 2020, Australia and New Zealand won the bid to host the Women's World Cup. The decision came after a vote by the FIFA Council, with the winning bid earning 22 votes, while Colombia earned 13. Neither country had previously hosted a senior FIFA tournament. This will be the first Women's World Cup to be hosted in multiple countries, and only the second World Cup tournament to do so, following the 2002 FIFA World Cup, held in Japan and South Korea. It is also the first FIFA Women's World Cup to be held in the southern hemisphere, the first senior FIFA tournament to be held in Oceania, and the first FIFA tournament to be hosted across multiple confederations (with Australia in the AFC and New Zealand in the OFC). Australia is the second association from the AFC to host the Women's World Cup, after China in both 1991 and 2007.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: In July 2019, FIFA President Gianni Infantino proposed an expansion of the Women's World Cup from 24 to 32 teams, starting with the 2023 edition, and doubling the tournament's prize money. The proposal came following the success of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup and the prior edition of the tournament in 2015, which after increasing from 16 to 24 teams set an attendance record for all FIFA competitions besides the men's FIFA World Cup. Expanding the tournament to allow eight additional participating teams gave more member associations a greater opportunity to qualify for the final tournament. This fostered the growing reach and professionalisation of the women's game.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: On 31 July, the FIFA Council unanimously decided to expand the tournament to 32 teams, featuring eight groups of four.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: The tournament opens with a group stage consisting of eight groups of four teams, with the top two teams progressing from each group to a knockout tournament starting with a round of 16 teams. The number of games played overall increases from 52 to 64. The tournament replicates the format of the men's FIFA World Cup used between 1998 to 2022.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: FIFA's confederations organise their qualifications through continental championships, with the exception of UEFA which organise their own qualifying competition. Australia and New Zealand, as co-hosts, qualified automatically for the tournament, leaving the remaining 207 FIFA member associations eligible to enter qualification if they chose to do so. Australia competed at the 2022 AFC Women's Asian Cup, whilst New Zealand did not enter the OFC Women's Nations Cup the same year. The reigning Women's World Cup champions United States competed in qualification through the CONCACAF W Championship as normal. The Chadian and Pakistani football associations were suspended by FIFA, thus excluding them from entering qualifications. Rwanda, Sudan, DR Congo and São Tomé and Príncipe entered qualification but withdrew later. Kenya withdrew before the second round of qualifiers. North Korea and Turkmenistan withdrew from the Women's Asian Cup qualifiers due to safety concerns and travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Iraq withdrew after the AFC draw. Due to the uncertainty of women's sport after the Taliban takeover of the country, Afghanistan withdrew from qualification. Due to COVID-19 pandemic outbreaks in their squads, Women's Asian Cup hosts India withdrew from qualification. American Samoa withdrew due to continuing difficulties related to the pandemic. Russia were disqualified from competing due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: The allocation of slots for each confederation was confirmed by the FIFA Council on 25 December 2020:


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: (*) The slots for the two host nations, Australia and New Zealand, were taken directly from the quotas allocated to their confederations, the AFC and OFC respectively.


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: A ten-team play-off tournament will decide the final three spots at the Women's World Cup. The play-off slot allocation is as follows:


title: 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

text: As of 11 October 2022, 29 nations have qualified for the finals, including 20 that competed at the previous tournament in 2019. Morocco, the Philippines, the Republic of Ireland, Vietnam and Zambia will be making their debuts at the FIFA Women's World Cup. This World Cup will be the first ever FIFA tournament the Philippines have taken part in. This is Vietnam's first ever FIFA women's competition, having only taken part in various FIFA men's tournaments. Zambia made history as the first landlocked country in Africa to qualify for a World Cup in either gender. Morocco became the first-ever Arab country to qualify for the Women's World Cup, while the Republic of Ireland marked their first-ever debut at any senior women's tournament. Denmark made their first appearance in 16 years after missing three consecutive tournaments, their last appearance being in 2007. Costa Rica, Colombia and Switzerland returned to the tournament after missing the previous tournament in 2019. Italy qualified for two consecutive World Cup for the first time in their history, after three sporadic appearances in 1991, 1999 and 2019. The remaining three qualifiers will be determined at the end of February 2023.