It was 50 years ago today.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. Arguably the Beatles' most celebrated album, it was unleashed onto an unsuspecting world in June 1967. Though there had been hints of the thousand new directions the band was about to take on previous records, Sgt. Pepper was a quantum leap.
The orchestral grandeur of A Day In The Life contrasts with the fragile beauty of She's Leaving Home. The front cover was groundbreaking, featuring a collage of contemporary and long dead celebrities. There are darker sides too – the drug allusions being one of the more obvious examples.
All in all, it's a dizzying package. I remember sitting on a bus in the mid 90s aged around 15 and a guy of about the same age asking me what I was listening to on my (cassette tape) Walkman. 'The Beatles' I told him, given that I rarely removed that cassette, with Abbey Road on the flip side.
He looked baffled. 'That's a bit old for you isn't it?' he enquired. Of course it wasn't – the album has something for everyone, from the circus style Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite to the eastern-influenced Within You Without You.
What's the point in remembering its release 50 years on then?
I think there's a couple of reasons that even though it probably isn't even the Beatles' best album, it can teach us something today.
Firstly, it shows the boundless creativity we're capable of as humans. The eclectic style of the album is matched by few others. It's almost as if the band is in a competition to write as many different styles of song as possible and have them still all hang together as a coherent album.
This creativity is a mirror of the wider world. The numerous different cultures, cuisines, musical styles, languages and much more are part of our God-given inheritance. What the Beatles had the chance to discover and then to express, was just a small part of the spectrum of the music that was burgeoning in the 1960s.
The endless creativity we see in nature and human culture reflects the boundless creativity of God. It's one of the reasons music can be so powerful. But there's a warning for us here as well. As a Church, we should be striving to reach these levels of creativity in our own music. Not just for the sake of selling more albums by Christian artists, but because our worship should reflect our creative creator.
For many centuries in Western music, Christian worship was at the forefront of creativity. That arguably isn't the case now. We should see Sgt. Pepper (and the numerous creative landmarks that have followed) as a challenge to make, promote and listen to truly creative Christian music.
Secondly, we can learn something about excellence from this record. There's a sense that nothing is left to chance – everything has been carefully thought about, from the opening to the closing seconds of the album.
If creativity should be our watch word, then the astounding quality of Sgt. Pepper should also make us think. Along with producer George Martin, the four Beatles set new standards in the way they recorded. Other 1960s songs can sound dated and fuzzy. The Beatles sound as fresh as they did 50 years ago.
There is a quality to their work which has already passed the test of time and will do so for generations to come. Again, we should look at the music the Church is producing today and ask if we could say the same. Music made for worship needn't be perfect, but it needs to be of a sufficient quality to give it a chance of making a lasting impact on people's lives.
The way Sgt. Pepper is being fondly remembered today, it's easy to see how big a landmark it was in the lives of many. Which Christian music of 2017 can we truly say the same of?
Maybe it's unfair to compare one of the great secular records of all time with today's Christian music. But we shouldn't underestimate the power of getting music right – and there are few better examples of that than the album released 50 years ago today.
