Flashback to 1967: The Beatles are reigning supreme over the music world, hair is longer, air is fresher and we have never heard of fake news. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The band's 8th album, rules the charts right beside The Doors and Bobbie Gentry.
Now flash forward to 2017: people live on their phones, the Internet has the answers to any question you could think to ask and... The Beatles are reigning supreme? That's right, the more things change the more they stay the same. The world around us is almost unrecognizable but you can still look to the Billboard charts and see something familiar.
This time The Beatles are occupying their familiar territory along side rappers Bryson Tiller and Kendrick Lamar.
Sgt. Pepper is arguably, very arguably, the Beatles best album. It's their best-selling album, even before this resurgence, and is actually the best-selling album of the 1960s.
(Bit of trivia for you: the band actually has 10 of the 13 top albums from the decade, broken only by soundtracks by The Sound of Music, South Pacific and West Side Story.)
There are some seriously die-hard fans of the album, and with songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and With A Little Help From My Friends even a Beatles novice will recognize tracks on the album. Perhaps that's why, exactly 50 years later, the album finds itself at the top of the charts.
In honor of that anniversary, Giles Martin, son of producer George Martin who worked on the original Sgt. Pepper album, released a brand new studio remix. This remix is the album version currently #3 on the Billboard Top 200.
Find out whats different on the next page!
The four-box set includes all the songs from the original release, digitally remastered for improved sound. It also includes several different versions of almost every song, including basic vocal tracks recorded before instruments were added later.
The result is a brand new hearing of familiar music, and is any Beatles' fan's dream. Giles said he's even included outtakes and "raw performances", which offer a unique glimpse of the band in their prime.
The release is technically number 3 on the Billboard rankings with 75,000 since June 1, about 25,000 copies behind Tiller's "True to Self" release. However most of Tiller's sales are digital downloads; Sgt. Pepper is number 1 in sales-only rankings with 71,000 hard copy sales vs 47,000 of Tiller's.
That mean's The Beatles are undisputed kings.
On June 1, 1967 the first release of the album hit the US. The next day it was number 1, where it remained for 15 straight weeks.