Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the seminal and legendary album by The Beatles, which not only seemed to crystallize the band, but also the entire sensibilities of the youth of the globe during the mid to late 1960s, celebrates its 50th anniversary today.

Released in America on June 2nd, 1967, and a week or so earlier in the band’s native UK, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has become such a recognizable force in pop cultural history, it’s almost like a brand, a headquarters where so many musical and cultural influences spawned. From its rich and vibrantly complex yet totally welcoming cover to the same adjectives applied to the wide range and scope of music, which almost acts as a primer for every single style of music up to that point in musical history (pop, cabaret, vaudeville, psychedelia, straightforward rock) and even acting as a blueprint to just the around the corner genres that followed (like progressive and even acid rock), Sgt. Pepper is a true artifact of a time long gone and yet still acts as a straight arrow pulse right in contemporary society, whether it’s for novelty’s sake or reality’s sake.

The internet is full of all kinds of mashup videos. And those that are lucky enough to go viral can hopefully last a lifetime rather than be a flash in the pan. But for YouTube user Palette-Swap Ninja, his mashup of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Star Wars to tell the story of A New Hope may last a lifetime.

These videos are a hilarious parody that swaps out lyrics of The Beatles’ iconic album and trades them in for vital Star Wars plot points. All of which you can see just by the titles like “Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans/With Illicit Help From Your Friends” or “Luke is in the Desert.” You can watch the videos below.

Just like that, it’s that time again, where the holiday season is upon us and the mad scrambles down store aisles to find just the right gifts for friends and loved ones commences. It’s a yearly ritual that always seems to come sooner than later. It’s also a sign that the year is coming to a close, and of course there’s no question that 2016 will remain in memory and history as one of the most turbulent, challenging, and painful times ever seen. It is for that reason that the holiday time should hold even extra special positive emotional weight, as community and solidarity run high among people during this time, acting as sort of metaphoric concrete that fills in the gaps that division among many created. And music too, is an eternal, external, and ultimately internal healing agent for the soul, regardless if times are happy or sad, joyous or maudlin. Music also reflects those aforementioned emotions and more. Here’s some of the best released this past year that will for sure excite even the most hardened by the whirlwind of the times and warm someone’s soul like kindling a hearth on the coldest December nights.

Check out our 2016 Holiday Geek Gift Guide for Music…

Netflix has added an exciting new series to its ever expanding repertoire. A new musical animated series, Beat Bugs, brings Beatles music to the young. On top of that already, the songs will be sung by various artists including Eddie Vedder, Pink, and Chris Cornell.

More below.

This week, has the glow come off Tesla‘s perfect record?, the first iPhone jailbreaker has hacked self-driving cars, it’s time for drones to be registered, a fresh batch of data breaches, and streaming music just got a little more Fab … all this and more on this week’s The Drill Down podcast.