Over a half-century after its release, the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been named the most popular British album of all time.
The Official Charts Company, which has tracked album sales in the U.K. since 1969, proclaimed the Fab Four’s 1967 masterpiece as Britain’s favorite album, using a metric based on album sales, downloads and streams, the Associated Press reports.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band defeated second place finisher Adele’s 21 and third place Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? for the honor. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moonand Michael Jackson’s Thriller claimed Numbers Four and Five on the all-time Official Studio Albums Chart, which was revealed in full on Saturday.
“The ground-breaking 1967 LP strides home with 5.34 million combined sales at the top of the all-time Official Studio Albums Chart, which has been compiled by the Official Charts Company to mark today’s National Album Day celebrations,” the company said in a statement.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the lone album from the 1960s, and the lone Beatles album, to make the Official Charts Company’s Top 40 list. The Beatles’ 1967 LP previously placed Number One on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time,” Rolling Stone wrote of the album, which celebrated its 50th anniversary with a deluxe reissue in 2017.
(Excerpt) Read more in: RollingStone