I like this from Jack White: “Think of all the great records. Every time there’s a list of the hundred greatest records of all time, all those albums were recorded in two days. Hardly any of them took a year, I’ll tell you.”
He may be overstating a slight bit, although I would say most classics are in a few months at the most. Jack’s most famous album was finished in 10 days. In the same interview quoted above he talks about how having a lot of time in the studio to tinker can take away what made a song great in the first place. That when you go back and hear the demos of the song they sound better than what goes on the album.
He also said every recording studio in the world should have a sign saying Sgt. Peppers was recorded on 4 track. I tend to agree with that.
The Beatles spent weeks (6 weeks?) working on the Mono mix of Sgt. Pepper’s.
But the version the public is most familiar with is the Stereo mix (which the Beatles did not work on) and was completed in something like 2 weeks.