structural:scholar_edition
Overview

Among musicologists, Allan Moore says that Sgt. Pepper is composed mainly of rock and pop music, while Michael Hannan and Naphtali Wagner both see it as an album of various genres; Hannan says it features "a broad variety of musical and theatrical genres". According to Hannan and Wagner, the music incorporates the stylistic influences of rock and roll, vaudeville, big band, piano jazz, blues, chamber, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music. Wagner feels the album's music reconciles the "diametrically opposed aesthetic ideals" of classical and psychedelia, achieving a "psycheclassical synthesis" of the two forms. Musicologist John Covach describes Sgt. Pepper as " proto-progressive ".

We didn't really shove the LP full of pot and drugs but, I mean, there was an effect. We were more consciously trying to keep it out. You wouldn't say, "I had some acid, baby, so groovy," but there was a feeling that something had happened between Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.

– John Lennon, 1968

According to author George Case, all of the songs on Sgt. Pepper were perceived by contemporary listeners as being drug-inspired, with 1967 marking the pinnacle of LSD's influence on pop music. Shortly before the album's release, the BBC banned "A Day in the Life" from British radio because of the phrase "I'd love to turn you on"; the BBC stated that it could "encourage a permissive attitude towards drug-taking". Although Lennon and McCartney denied any drug-related interpretation of the song at the time, McCartney later suggested that the line referred to either drugs or sex. The meaning of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" became the subject of speculation, as many believed that the title was code for LSD. In " Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! ", the reference to "Henry the Horse" contains two common slang terms for heroin. Fans speculated that Henry the Horse was a drug dealer and " Fixing a Hole " was a reference to heroin use. Others noted lyrics such as "I get high" from " With a Little Help from My Friends ", "take some tea" – slang for cannabis use – from "Lovely Rita", and "digging the weeds" from "When I'm Sixty-Four".

The author Sheila Whiteley attributes Sgt. Pepper ' s underlying philosophy not only to the drug culture, but also to metaphysics and the non-violent approach of the flower power movement. The musicologist Oliver Julien views the album as an embodiment of "the social, the musical, and more generally, the cultural changes of the 1960s". The album's primary value, according to Moore, is its ability to "capture, more vividly than almost anything contemporaneous, its own time and place". Whiteley agrees, crediting the album with "provid a historical snapshot of England during the run-up to the Summer of Love ". Several scholars have applied a hermeneutic strategy to their analysis of Sgt. Pepper ' s lyrics, identifying loss of innocence and the dangers of overindulgence in fantasies or illusions as the most prominent themes.