The 40 Essential Albums of 1967

While making a full meal of their most delectable concept, a pirate-radio broadcast, the Who's finest album exemplifies how pop this famously psychedelic year was. The mock jingles - for pimple cream, deodorant, baked beans - are pop at its grubbiest. The fictional singles, typified but not necessarily topped by the actual hit "I Can See for Miles," are pop soaring like the dream of youth it is - exalted, visionary, even, in their crafty way, psychedelic. All the rest is English eccentricity.