The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is noted as one of the most influential and groundbreaking albums of all-time. However, much of literature focuses the study of its influence on merely the music, instead of the album as an entire artwork. The Sgt. Pepper album cover is a vibrant and lively collage that embodies a very different tune to the popular "Fab Four." At an unsettling time in history and the band's career, the Beatles decided to end their world tour performances and become only a studio-recording band through introducing the fictional Sgt. Pepper's Band. The purpose of this paper is to use cluster criticism in order to determine how the Sgt. Pepper album cover reveals the band's motive and embodies transition. Through studying the key terms of the visual discourse - the bed of flowers, the blue sky, the wax "Fab Four" Beatles, and Sgt. Pepper's Band - it was determined that the album artwork creates the metaphor of a gravesite to send the message of transition. By contrasting the "Fab Four" performers and Sgt. Pepper's musicians through colors and instruments, the Beatles create distance from their past identities and careers, asking audiences to accept the new artistic identity of the band.
Key words: the beatles, sgt. pepper's, sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band, music, artwork, album cover
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