[23] Musicologist Dominic Pedler describes this as a profound and surprising innovation involving abandoning mid-cycle what initially appears to be a standard I–vi–ii–V doo-wop pop chord cycle.

[40] Following another reduction mix, brass and woodwind instruments, including four flutes, were added on 9 and 12 January,[41] from a score by producer George Martin, guided by McCartney's suggested melody lines.

[47] Mason later said he was impressed that Lennon, Harrison and Starr were present at the session, demonstrating a common interest in shaping the result,[42] although he was taken aback by their new look of moustaches and psychedelic clothing.

[53][nb 5] In author Mark Hertsgaard's description, the trumpet solo is the recording's "pièce de résistance" and evokes a "sense of freedom, energy, and sheer happiness".

[42] Author Jonathan Gould describes the sound as "impossibly high and bright", and says that the solo represents a "neo-Baroque pastiche of every fanfare ever blown" and casts a magical spell that allows the Beatles to insert the risqué "Four of fish and finger pies" line into the chorus that follows.

[60] The two- and six-disc anniversary editions also featured a new remix of "Penny Lane" prepared by Giles Martin, designed to allow the keyboard parts to be heard distinctly.

[38] The Beatles' low public profile since completing their 1966 US tour in late August caused concern for Brian Epstein, their manager, who feared that the band's popularity might suffer.

Wary also of the threat presented by the Monkees, an American television and recording act formed in the Beatles' image,[61] Epstein conceded to pressure from EMI in January 1967 and approached Martin for a new single by the band.

[62][72] Another street scene features only Lennon, walking along King's Road, Chelsea[73] among a crowd in a manner that author Robert Rodriguez terms "as if in a nostalgic reverie".

[75] According to music critic Chris Ingham, the film appears to be "little more than an extra-curricular afterthought" relative to the surreal and experimental "Strawberry Fields Forever" clip.

[80][81][nb 6] According to Hertsgaard, since the band avoided any attempt to play or sing, the clip for "Penny Lane" consists of images that "amplify or somehow comment on" the song's themes.

He says the "most arresting" scenes are Lennon's walk along the sun-lit city street, the Beatles riding their horses through a stone archway, and the four band members "sitting at an immaculately set table in the middle of a field, where they are served tea in what is very plainly bitterly cold weather".

[90][91] Comparing the two sides, author Clinton Heylin writes that McCartney was possibly "fearful of alienating fans unduly" with the more dense and experimental "Strawberry Fields Forever".

He says that with "Penny Lane", McCartney was "again cast in the role of the great populariser" by providing the "more prosaic depiction of the Liverpool of their youth ... set to another of his eminently hummable melodies".

[99] On 25 February, they aired on The Hollywood Palace, a traditional US variety program hosted by actor Van Johnson, who claimed that the Beatles had created the films especially for his show.

[102] The films attracted a similar level of confusion on the more youth-focused American Bandstand, on 11 March, where host Dick Clark invited comments from his studio audience.

[103] Clark introduced the clip with a warning that it showed a "very interesting and different looking Beatles", after which he sought opinions from his teenage audience with what author Doyle Greene describes as "an urgent solemnity as if he were discussing the Zapruder film".

[119] Melody Maker said the brass parts were "beautifully arranged" and concluded: "Tinged with sentimentality, the number slowly builds into an urgent, colourful and vivid recollection of the Liverpool street that the Beatles remember so clearly.

[121] With "Penny Lane" as the side favoured by the chart,[122] the single was held at number 2 behind Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me",[123][124] even though the Beatles' record sold considerably more.

[144] According to historian David Simonelli, further to "Tomorrow Never Knows" in 1966, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" "establish[ed] the Beatles as the most avant-garde [pop] composers of the postwar era".

[145]Ian MacDonald comments on "Penny Lane"'s place in an era of high optimism in Britain marked by a vibrant arts scene, England's victory in the 1966 World Cup, and the Beatles' standing as "arbiters of a positive new age" in which outdated social mores would be superseded by a young, classless worldview.

He writes: "With its vision of 'blue suburban skies' and boundlessly confident vigour, 'Penny Lane' distills the spirit of that time more perfectly than any other creative product of the mid-Sixties.

Couched in the primary colours of a picture-book, yet observed with the slyness of a gang of kids straggling home from school, 'Penny Lane' is both naive and knowing – but above all thrilled to be alive.

"[146] MacDonald adds that although the song "fathered a rather smug English pop vogue for brass bands and gruff Northern imagery", its sequence in the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine demonstrated it to be "as subversively hallucinatory as 'Strawberry Fields'".

In his commentary on the track, Neil Innes admired McCartney's melodic gifts and the key changes, and he described the song as "mould-breaking" with lyrics that "ran like a movie".

[150] Sociologist Andy Bennett views the characters in the lyrics as representing a "story book version of British suburban life", an approach that he says anticipated television soap operas such as Brookside and EastEnders.

Bennett writes that a similar notion of "Britishness" informed music videos by Britpop acts in the 1990s, particularly Blur's "Parklife", which brought to life some of the lyrical imagery of Lennon–McCartney songs and the "utopian reminiscing" evident in "Penny Lane".

According to author Alan Clayson, it was one of several McCartney compositions that "walked a safe and accessible line" and allowed easy interpretation during a period when "schmaltz was represented in the charts as much as psychedelia".

[165] Artists who have covered the song include Amen Corner, Judy Collins, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, Engelbert Humperdinck, James Last, Enoch Light, Kenny Rankin, John Valby, Newton Wayland and Kai Winding.

[168] Elvis Costello performed "Penny Lane" during a concert at the White House in June 2010 when McCartney received the Gershwin Prize from President Barack Obama.