After 10 years and more than 1,000 tributes paid, British artist Chris Barker is concluding his ambitious Sgt. Pepper‘s project. Every December since 2016, Barker has spent the latter part of the year assembling his homage to famous, infamous, and beloved figures we lost that year, all compiled in a giant, overstuffed montage honoring the Beatles’ iconic cover for their groundbreaking 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
This year’s effort was one of the most crowded ever, with 245 names on the list, from the expected — Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Reiner, Gene Hackman, Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson, wrestler Hulk Hogan, and funk innovator Sly Stone — to some quintessentially quirky picks that will resonate with British fans but might not translate on this side of the pond (Clodagh Rodgers, 1971 Irish Eurovision “Jack in the Box” singer).
Click here to see this year’s image and key.
“It was the night of the U.S. election. I was staying up late in the U.K. to watch America elect their first-ever female president… or so I thought,” Barker says about the origins of his passion project in a statement to Billboard. “But then things took an unexpected turn. The commentators started to say things like ‘Florida is too close to call’ and I began thinking what a strange year it had been. I wanted to get my feelings about the year down on paper and for some reason it came out as a parody of the famous Beatles album cover. I posted it online and went to bed. When I woke up – on what coincidentally was my birthday – everything had changed. Trump was president, the world was in shock, I had a viral hit on my hands and the Washington Post was comparing me to Andy Warhol. Suffice to say it was big.”
Barker, however, never imagined he’d still be talking about it a decade later, as well as publishing a 100-page commemorative book compiling all the images that is due to ship to fans in early 2026.
What started out as his emotional, personal response to a seismic 2016 that also brought Brexit, as well as Prince and David Bowie’s deaths turned into an annual global conversation about who should have been included and who shouldn’t have despite Barker’s insistence that it was not meant to be comprehensive and is “just a personal take on things.”
That’s why this year’s image features a frontline that truly runs the gamut: from Osbourne front-and-center, flanked by heavyweight boxing champ and grill salesman George Foreman, Stone, Blondie drummer Clem Burke, and Reservoir Dogs star Michael Madsen, to Superman actors Terence Stamp and Hackman, pop savant Wilson, Butch Cassidy actor/director Robert Redford, Val Kilmer (The Doors), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), singer Marianne Faithfull, WWE icon Hogan, and British boxer Ricky Hatton.
The musical world is well-represented as usual, thanks to headshots of reggae great Jimmy Cliff, Stone Roses bassist Mani Mounfield, Sam and Dave’s Sam Moore, “Killing Me Softly” singer Robert Flack, D’Angelo, Angie Stone, Soft Cell’s Dave Ball, Booker T and the MGs Steve Cropper, Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, the Grateful Dead’s Donna Godchaux, Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers, KISS guitarist Ace Frehley, the New York Dolls’ David Johansen, Moody Blues singer John Lodge, accordionist Flaco Jiménez, The Band keyboardist Garth Hudson, Supertramp’s Rick Davies and revered British vocalist Terry “Superlungs” Reid among many others.
“I never intended to make it an annual thing. It was supposed to be a one-off. But every year people would beg me to do it again until it kind of became a routine – just something I did,” Barker says. “Everybody loves those end-of-year tributes to the stars we’ve lost over the course of a year. You pick up the papers and look through the obituaries. You love the Oscars montage of stars who’ve passed. It’s a primeval thing I suppose. You like being reminded of people you used to love that you’d forgotten about. And I’m touched that people enjoy the thing I produce so much. I really am.”
Look closer and you’ll see plenty of folks from movies, theater, TV, politics and pop culture including: Prunella Scales (Fawlty Towers), director David Lynch (Twin Peaks), George Wendt (Cheers), satirist Tom Lehrer, playwright Tom Stoppard, comedian Ruth Buzzi (Laugh-In), primatologist Jane Goodall, Jeffery Epstein sex-trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre, Pope Francis, The Alarm singer Mike Peters, chef Anne Burrell, reggae singer Max Romeo, Mastodon guitarist Brett Hinds, composer Lalo Schifrin (Mission Impossible), former U.S. VP Dick Cheney, Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell and Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk.
But in the end, 10 years was enough for Barker who jokes that as his quirky hobby has marched on he’s gotten closer to the age of the people he’s honoring. And after a year in which Oasis reunited and set the world on fire with their sold-out world stadium tour Barker adds that he doesn’t really “want to get to the stage where the front row are the big stars of Britpop from my youth – and I’m not that keen on one year leaving one finished and someone having to add me!”
