Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26 May 1967 in the United Kingdom and 2 June 1967 in the United States, it was an immediate commercial and critical success, spending 27 weeks at the top of the UK albums chart and 15 weeks at number one in the US. On release, the album was lauded by the vast majority of critics for its innovations in music production, songwriting and graphic design, for bridging a cultural divide between popular music and high art, and for providing a musical representation of its generation and the contemporary counterculture.

After finishing Sgt. Pepper, but prior to the album's commercial release, the Beatles took an acetate disc of the album to the American singer Cass Elliot's flat off King's Road in Chelsea, where at six in the morning they played it at full volume with speakers set in open window frames. The group's friend and former press agent, Derek Taylor, remembered that residents of the neighbourhood opened their windows and listened without complaint to what they understood to be unreleased Beatles music. On 26 May 1967, Sgt. Pepper was given a rushed release in the UK, where it was originally scheduled for 1 June. The US release followed on 2 June. It was the first Beatles album where the track listings were exactly the same for the UK and US versions. The band's eighth LP, it debuted in the UK at number one - where it stayed for 22 consecutive weeks - selling 250,000 copies during the first seven days. On 4 June, the Jimi Hendrix Experience opened a show at the Saville Theatre in London with their rendition of the title track. Epstein owned the Saville at the time, and Harrison and McCartney attended the performance. McCartney described the moment: "The curtains flew back and [Hendrix] came walking forward playing 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's a pretty major compliment in anyone's book. I put that down as one of the great honours of my career." Rolling Stone magazine's Langdon Winner recalls:  The closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the Sgt. Pepper album was released. In every city in Europe and America the radio stations played [it] ... and everyone listened ... it was the most amazing thing I've ever heard. For a brief while the irreparable fragmented consciousness of the West was unified, at least in the minds of the young.  Sgt. Pepper was widely perceived by listeners as the soundtrack to the "Summer of Love". In Riley's opinion, the album "drew people together through the common experience of pop on a larger scale than ever before". American radio stations interrupted their regular scheduling, playing the album virtually non-stop - often from start to finish. It occupied the number one position of the Billboard Top LPs in the US for 15 weeks, from 1 July to 13 October 1967. With 2.5 million copies sold within three months of its release, Sgt. Pepper's initial commercial success exceeded that of all previous Beatles albums. None of its songs were issued as singles at the time.

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