Sgt. Pepper and the White Album: The Establishment and Dissolution of the Album Form

Critics and fans already regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as the apotheosis of the album form by the time the Beatles recorded their follow-up LP, the White Album. Always artistically restless, the band were no longer interested in creating the same type of cohesive, thematically unified album as Sgt. Pepper; they had already accomplished that feat and moved on. With the White Album, the Beatles positively shattered any sense of textual unity, creating a type of anti-Pepper and, perhaps unavoidably, anti-album. Doing so allowed the Beatles to undermine album construction and allowed the audience insight into the band's creative process.