The recording studio is an invigorating place in which to work. Pressures of time and competing personalities can forge the most stimulating aural experiences from piecemeal, often banal, structures. In the case of Sgt. Pepper, such pressures have bequeathed us an album of thirteen discrete songs, marketed in a sleeve which conveys the illusion of a coherent package (rather than a ‘mixed bag’), wherein the order of the songs (notwithstanding today's CD technology) is highly important. In this chapter, I shall consider each song in turn and conclude with some brief remarks on the entire set and on that packaging, asking how the incoherent strands of material reported in chapter 3 were projected on to an assumed audience. We already have gutsy, impressionistic accounts in plenty – most rock journalists have offered us their interpretations at one time or other – but they tend to tell us more about the writer than the song. I shall represent myself as offering an ‘objective’ account of what each song is, counterpointing my interpretations with those of specific others where the differences are significant. My guiding principle has been that the visceral pleasures, those pleasures beyond the reach of discussion or analysis which these songs offer, are not the only ones, nor are they ultimately the most significant.

Writing in 1996, two crucial issues impinge on the way the texts of popular music need to be approached.