Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album carried on the childhood and Liverpool theme with its circus and fairground effects, its pervading atmosphere of the traditional northern music hall that was in both its main creators' [McCartney and Lennon's] blood." "Sgt. Pepper" album cover was designed by the pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. Blake recalled of the concept: "I offered the idea that if they had just played a concert in the park, the cover could be a photograph of the group just after the concert with the crowd who had just watched the concert, watching them. If we did this by using cardboard
The Beatles (album) group should have released a single album instead. Nonetheless, "The Beatles" reached No. 1 on the charts in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and has since been viewed by some critics as one of the greatest albums of all time. By 1968, the Beatles had achieved commercial and critical success. The group's mid-1967 release, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", was number one in the UK for 27 weeks, through to the start of February 1968, having sold 250,000 copies in the first week after release. "Time" magazine declared that "Sgt. Pepper's" constituted a "historic departure in