Amanda Palmer Said 1 Album Is The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ for Her Generation
Amanda Palmer is a big fan of classic rock. She said one album from the 1990s was The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for her generation. On one level, she’s totally right — and on another, she’s objectively wrong.
Amanda Palmer said 1 album is like The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ because it’s ‘isolated’
During a 2012 interview with The Quietus, Palmer named the albums that impacted her the most. One was In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. If you are familiar with Palmer’s solo career or her work with The Dresden Dolls, you can definitely see the connection between her music and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Both are quirky and use a lot of old-fashioned instruments that make the songs feel like they could have been written prior to the advent of rock ‘n’ roll.
Palmer explained her love for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. “I think that this is one of the best albums of all time,” she said. “It’s hard to talk about. I feel like that album is the Sgt Pepper’s of my generation. It’s a record that knits together a whole generation of music lovers. The fact that it’s separate and isolated is sort of poetic. My generation wasn’t connected by a band; we didn’t have a Beatles. We had our own bizarre little pockets of music, our own separate ways of listening and connecting.”
Amanda Palmer felt ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ sounds like The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’
Palmer seemed to say that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea does exactly what good music is supposed to do. “Music connects you, through this magical medium, to another human being,” she opined. “Listening to Neutral Milk Hotel and looking at the artwork for that record and listening to how it was made, and thinking about the mythology of the Elephant 6 collective, it’s like Sgt Pepper’s — you imagine that there’s this magical world somewhere, with all these crazy musicians, living down the road from each other, banging on pots and pans and playing brass instruments, and you want to be there.”
Palmer recalled that the other member of The Dresden Dolls, Brian Viglione, had her listen to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea for the first time after their first band rehearsal. He felt that The Dresden Dolls could not accomplish anything until they were both familiar with Neutral Milk Hotel’s magnum opus. That says a lot about Palmer and her artistry — as well as the enduring influence of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
1 of the albums was barely a hit
Perhaps In the Aeroplane Over the Sea impacted 1990s rockers as much as Sgt. Pepper impacted 1960s rockers. However, the two records were miles apart in terms of their commercial success. Sgt. Pepper topped the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks, lasting on the chart for a whopping 233 weeks in total.
On the other hand, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was more of a cult hit. That record reached No. 12 on the Billboard’s Vinyl Albums chart, staying there for a mere 16 weeks. While The Beatles produced hit album after hit album, Neutral Milk Hotel only produced one other record, On Avery Island, which did not chart.
Neutral Milk Hotel wasn’t massively popular — but Palmer felt their influence mirrored the Fab Four’s.
