With the backdrop of the demise of manager Brian Epstein in the previous year, followed in 1968 by the chaotic launch of the band’s Apple Corps, the Vietnam war, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Īlso Read: Tastes May Change, but the Classics Remain: the Best Albums of 1968 This year is the double-album’s 50th anniversary, and the celebration was preceded by the band’s surviving members releasing a deluxe reissue of the album on November 9, through their Apple Corps, in conjunction with Capitol/Universal Music.

But, depending on your perspective, the Beatles came close with their follow up in 1968, with an album eventually known as the ‘White Album’.

How do you follow up ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, released in 1967, arguably considered as the world’s greatest album? Quite simply, you cannot.