Even if Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band isn’t your favorite Beatles fare, you’ve got to admit that the 1967 concept album is full of some seriously catchy earworms. Who doesn’t love “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” or “With a Little Help from My Friends”? But thanks to the tireless efforts of musical parody duo Palette-Swap Ninja, you can listen to those iconic tracks updated some more elegant lyrics for a civilized age. That’s right: it’s been Star Wars-ified!
To commemorate both the 40th anniversary of Star Wars and the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper this year, Daniel Edward Amrich and Jude Aaron Kelley have released a new full-length album called Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans, which roughly follows the plot of Star Wars: A New Hope by way of parodies of all the tracks on the original Sgt. Pepper album. This isn’t just any old parody song collection, either—it apparently took five years to make, because not only did the pair write all new lyrics for every single song, they also reverse-engineered and recorded every single song from scratch, inserting references to John Williams’ original Star Wars score all the while. Dang, no wonder it took so long!
Best of all, they’ve also produced a series of music videos with Katrin Auch that sync up the movie with the awesome new lyrics. Check it out here:
It’s hard to pick a favorite song from what I’ve listened to so far, but I’m especially tickled by “Dianoga,” a reimagining of “Lovely Rita” that’s all about the sewer snake Han, Luke and Leia encounter in the Death Star garbage chute. I mean, how do you not fall in love with the line, “Would you feel free to please release my knee?” That is rhyming brilliance if ever I heard it.
The album is also available to stream on Palette Swap-Ninja’s Soundcloud page, or you can download the whole thing in two different formats on their website. Listen to it for a bit and let us know in the comments what your favorite track is!
Image: Lucasfilm
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