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I like Abbey Road best, both sides, acknowledging that Side B is most special.
Sgt. Pepper really is great, and I like it too. It shows accomplishment/mastery on every level, it's great music, and it made people think. But it gets most remembered for the enormous cultural role it played that Summer, as much as or more than anything else. The right album at the right time to fill a hole and to trend with the changes that were all around us. Is it a teeny-weeny bit pretentious and self-conscious, even a bit preachy as to the PC of the times? I think those things are true, too.
Magical mystery Tour and the White Album have some great songs but they really aren't the cohesive works that Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road are, they are horses of a different color, just accumulations of songs, some good or great, some low rent, just aggregated together without much connection. If one of those albums is your favorite, it's because you like particular songs they contain, not any experience the album provides.
Some of their best stuff, even to the end, was released only as singles - later compiled by Captiol into US Only albums. I'm still a fan of "You Know Ny Name, Look Up the Number" which, I'll guess, few readers here have ever heard of.
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Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. . . Restraint in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue.
Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964
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