As anyone who wasn't there might, fellow Blogcritic Mark Boudreau wonders what the big deal is about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?

Fair enough- there is quite a bit of carrying on about this thing. After all, it's just an album.

Let me take a humble crack at explaining it.

Sgt. Pepper had a unique impact somewhat apart from the specific content. There are a few albums in rock music that are as good or perhaps even marginally greater [though it'd be hard to be MUCH greater than this classic]. There are at least three or four different Beatle albums that you could argue were the greatest.

All votes for Revolver will be counted. It may be more consistent. You might reasonably argue that there were maybe a couple of songs on Pepper that were merely quite good, not immortal classics. "Getting Better" and "Good Morning" come to mind.

Sgt Pepper, however, was a special moment, the Beatles official coming out as artistes. They were rapidly becoming more sophisticated and experimental over their last couple of albums, but Pepper took this meta-idea to another level. It's not just that it had some good songs, but some combination of things here changed the way a lot of people thought about music like very few other albums have.

As to being a "concept album," Pepper was certainly that. It would be problematic to come up with a simple sentence to communicate the concept though, because the concept is not a simple story line. Nor would that necessarily be an impressive concept.

Pepper does, however, have some kind of unique cohesion and sound. It sounds like Pepper, not like Rubber Soul or Abbey Road. They had a unique combination of sounds and influences here, even within the Beatles own work. They mixed in particularly a lot of odd reflections of the English music hall/vaudeville types of songs and archaic old-timey sentiments. "When I'm Sixty-Four" of course is always cited, but consider also the sad sentimentality of "She's Leaving Home" as well. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" plays into that general old time show biz feel.