Paul McCartney February 1967, and the LP followed in June. McCartney's "She's Leaving Home" was an orchestral pop song. MacDonald described the track as "[among] the finest work on "Sgt. Pepper"—imperishable popular art of its time". Based on an ink drawing by McCartney, the LP's cover included a collage designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, featuring the Beatles in costume as the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing with a host of celebrities. The heavy moustaches worn by the Beatles reflected the growing influence of hippie style trends on the band, while their clothing "spoofed the vogue in
The Beatles (album) of oppressed races, drawing parallels with chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation. Sociologists Michael Katovich and Wesley Longhofer write that the album's release created "a collective appreciation of it as a 'state-of-the-art' rendition of the current pop, rock, and folk-rock sounds". The majority of music critics categorize "The Beatles" as postmodern, emphasizing aesthetic and stylistic features of the album. Other scholars situate all Beatles' work within a modernist stance, based either on their "artificiality" or their ideological stance of progress through love and peace. Scapelliti cites it as the source of "the freeform nihilism echoed … in the punk