What is the Gen X Sgt Pepper?
Fatback
6,746 Posts
or 
either way... 
Fatback
6,746 Posts
or either way...
Comments
Define "Sgt. Pepper" for me. What is a "Sgt. Pepper" album?
VS
or
record that changes the game and defines a generation
I guess that would be their
That's what I figured.
I'm not in Generation X, but Nevermind still has relevancy among my students.
Madonna?
disqualified due to conflict of interest. Macca = the boy is mine etc.
NEXT
While, in my private mind garden, I'd like to champion this album:
I think, in all objectivity, it'd have to be more like this album:
I can see ITANOM, but the latter is 25-40% crap.
"like a cookie, they all crumble"
I don't really ride for it that hard, but it seemed to get plenty of shine from people I didn't expect to dig it.
I think you could make strong cases for "Nevermind", "The Chronic", and "Ready To Die". I'm trying to think of others but it's tough.
About 35 years old and American.
That would be our Exile on Main Street.
Interesting. I think that popular music has diversified significantly since The Beatles released Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, and with that diversification the market, the audience, and the critics have fragmented somewhat. You still get people who try to be general music critics, but they tend to fall victim to very salient in-group critiques like when, say, Christgau tries to review rap records. He does ok at it, but at the end, he is
So if we try to essentialize Sgt. Peppers into a genre, the genre being Rock, I think that the modern equivalent is likely to be OK Computer. All rock critics fawn over that record, and for good reason. To sound like a total ponce (which I sometimes am), it captured the zeitgeist. But then, we don't see a lot of non-white acts in other genres being influenced by OK Computer to the point of covering its songs.
Nevermind has broader crossover appeal, but not by that much. Smells Like Teen Spirit was a much bigger single than anything off of OK Computer (which was deliberately not single oriented), so your rapsters are almost certain to have heard the song (whether they liked it or not I cannot say). And again, you don't see many soul acts covering Nirvarna (though you do have Herbie Hancock's version of All Apologies from New Standards, and Tori Amos' version of Smells Like Teen Spirit...) (and if you judge by which artists have covers in other genres, I have this really shitty punk cover of Burn Hollywood Burn on seven inch...)
If you want to talk about a record that changed the way genres and audiences were defined and understood, I think you've got to predate "The Chronic" and head either to N.W.A. "Straight Outta Compton" or the Beastie Boys "Licensed to Ill," and probably the latter. It was one or both of those records that changed the market and the genres and the audience and "suddenly" white kids in the suburbs were listening to rap, and the labels knew it. THAT changed the game, and paved the way for the multi-platinum successes of The Chronic and Ready to Die.
So it depends on what you mean when you ask for this generation's Sgt. Peppers. If the question is which rock record from the 1990s will remain in the top five of rockist critics for all time, the answer is either Nevermind or OK Computer, and maybe both. If the question is which record of the last 20 years fundamentally changed the way music is marketed and the way its audience is understood (which I'm not sure that Sgt. Peppers did really), I think the answer is probably either "Straight Outta Compton" or "Licensed to Ill."
My two.
JRoot
Unquestionably.
Jan Wenner called. He wants his wiener back.
Yeah, I'd say this is it. Bono has the international stature of a Lennon or McCartney.
I'm not sure how influential it was -- I wasn't analyzing music when it came out.
And I was beginning to enjoy the more mellow, laid back Fatback 2008.