In his appraisal of the song, musicologist Walter Everett states that, as on the band's "Revolver" album, "the most monumental piece on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was Lennon's". He identifies the track's most striking feature as "its mysterious and poetic approach to serious topics that come together in a larger, direct message to its listeners, an embodiment of the central ideal for which the Beatles stood: that a truly meaningful life can be had only when one is aware of one's self and one's surroundings and overcomes the status quo." Beatles biographer Philip Norman describes "A Day in the Life" as a "masterpiece" and cites it as an example of how "Sgt. Pepper" "certainly was John's "Freak Out!"", referring to the 1966 album by the Mothers of Invention. As the closing track on "Sgt. Pepper", the song was the object of intense scrutiny and commentary. In Ian MacDonald's description, it has been interpreted "as a sober return to the real world after the drunken fantasy of 'Pepperland'; as a conceptual statement about the structure of the pop album (or the artifice of the studio, or the falsity of recorded performance); as an evocation of a bad trip; as a 'pop "Waste Land"; even as a morbid celebration of death".