The Beatles' cover art for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band stands as one of the most popular and copied in music history. The only album cover that may top it in popularity and the number of times it's been copied over the years is another Beatles classic, Abbey Road, which followed Sgt. Pepper into stores two years later in 1969.

The 1967 album is arguably the more innovative cover, a psychedelic splash of color and whimsy featuring more than 50 figures from history, some dead at the time of the historic shoot on March 30, 1967, some still very much alive. Almost immediately it was ripe for other artists to parody and pay tribute to, as you'll see in our below gallery of 42 Awesome Takes on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Album Cover Art.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band wasn't even nine months old when Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention released We're Only in It for the Money, which not only parodied the Beatles album's psychedelic-shaded themes in its music, its album cover -- shuffled to the inside to sidestep legal fears at the last minute -- lined up 50 different figures in a twisted copy.

Over the years, other artists paid tribute to that famous cover -- some famous, some not so famous, including the Simpsons, the Beatles-skewing Rutles and even a former member of the Beatles, as well as an update by Peter Blake, the man responsible for the album's original artwork.

It's no surprise why so many artists -- both the musical and visual varieties -- have paid tribute to the famous artwork over the past 50 years: It's one of the most iconic images of the past century, and one of the most influential, as you'll see in our gallery of 42 Awesome Takes on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Album Cover Art.