Remastered Beatles classic headed back to top of US Billboard charts

Fifty years after it was released, an album that critics and fans alike regard as one of The Beatles’ finest is heading back to No 1 in the US Billboard charts, albeit a remastered version with extra tracks and interviews.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in Britain on May 26, 1967, and seven days later in the United States. It was the Liverpool group’s eighth studio album and it spent 27 weeks at No 1 in the UK and 15 weeks at the top of the Billboard charts.

Only a handful of albums down the decades have sold more copies.

William Goodman, writing this month in Billboard magazine, described the album as a “musically groundbreaking, hyper-influential career-high watermark from the Best Band of All Time”.

“Sergeant Pepper’s is indeed that album,” he added, saying that the collection of 13 songs on the original double-vinyl album became a crossroads marker for the band, which had begun to grow tired of constant touring and television appearances after its breakthrough single Love Me Do hit the UK charts in 1962.

John Lennon, probably the most subversive member of the group, and certainly the most outspoken, summed up The Beatles’ attitude toward stage performances at the time by saying: “They could send out four waxworks ... and that would satisfy the crowds. Beatles concerts are nothing to do with music any more. They are just (expletive) tribal rites.”

Paul McCartney, Lennon’s songwriting partner, later said: “We were fed up with being The Beatles. We really hated that (expletive) four little moptop approach. We were men,