I'm a bit stuck for a love song for Pepper though
I suppose the best you're going to come up with for a boy meets girl is "Lovely Rita". Bad luck!
But why do we need a boy loves girl (or whatever gender loving whatever other gender) type of love song on this album anyway? Haven't the Beatles already written and sung about 90 million of that type of love song? I think it's way cool that they were branching out, showing interest in things beyond a topic that is too often used to limit pop songs and the artists who perform them. Lots of musical artists got this static as they moved forward in their careers.
George had to redo his
Somewhere in England album because Warner didn't hear enough "hits" on it (which George described as teenage love songs), although (per Wiki) a survey conducted in 2006 of the top 50 most popular 'Harrisongs' on the official George Harrison.com message boards included only one song from the album as released and
three of the four rejected songs. (In my opinion the meddling makes this one of George's weakest albums.) Tom Petty was told that his
Full Moon Fever album was virtually unreleasable because of the same lack, but he got it through somehow (he tells the story in his autobiography). This was his best-selling solo album, if I'm not mistaken, containing hits such as "Free Fallin'", "I Won't Back Down" and "Runnin' Down A Dream".
Look, I don't mind love songs-- they're gear! But we don't need a love song per se to get a feeling of love, do we? Watch
Love Actually again (just for the fun of it), about all the types of love being celebrated in various configurations. Sgt. Pepper's celebrates a love of life, music, friendship, family, home, drugs, and fuzzy little animals. What can be more loving than that?
I would hate to see Sgt. Pepper's tried to be squashed into the mold, when it did so much to
break the mold. It expanded consciousness in all directions-- what music could do and sound like, what artists could release as a viable commercial product that didn't follow the "rules", what people could think about and discuss that wasn't limited to "safe" subjects. Go ahead, talk about being old or being high or marking the death of a friend. The only limit is your own mind.
I know you were only asking the question, DaveRam. I'm sorry for this long response, but "The Summer of Love" was a media contrivance. The Beatles didn't follow the media; the media followed them. Obviously there was enough love in this album to make it the poster child of that time period. I am happy to take the results as they stand.
*hugs DaveRam in a completely platonic way*