The Great Beatles Songs: A Day in the Life

I love The Beatles. They are my favorite group ever. Macca (Paul McCartney) is the man.

They had 27 #1 singles total (combined from America and England). Many people just know the Fabs from these big hits (Love Me Do, From Me to You, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Can't Buy Me Love, A Hard Day's Night, I Feel Fine, Eight Days a Week, Ticket to Ride, Help!, Yesterday, Day Tripper, We Can Work it Out, Paperback Writer, Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, All You Need is Love, Hello Goodbye, Lady Madonna, Hey Jude, Get Back, The Ballad of John and Yoko, Something, Come Together, Let it Be, The Long and Winding Road). And I too love many of these hits (Paperback Writer, I Feel Fine, Hey Jude, Yesterday). But I have found ten songs that I consider the greatest Beatles songs. In the next few weeks I will post about the ten greatest Beatles songs, in ascending order from 10 to 1. Some of their number one hits will make the list (three of them). But the other seven are not commercial hits. But if you do not know them, your knowledge of popular rock'n'roll music is, sadly, incomplete. So, without further ado....number 10.

A Day in the Life
The encore for Sgt. Pepper. Sgt Pepper was supposed to be this great concept album. In actuality it was only conceptual in that they dressed weird for the cover shoot, had two songs and a finale that linked together and Paul to this day stresses it was a concept album. But everything John contributed was special and stands apart. Three of his finest works as a songwriter appear on Pepper (Day, Lucy in the Sky and Mr. Kite). But A Day in the Life is the highlight on what many people believe to be the greatest album of all time (not me, as I rank this #3 JUST out of Beatle albums).

They pieced this song together from some bits of songs. John had one about reading some things from the newspaper (the death of the guiness beer heir in a car wreck, the potholes in Lancashire). And Paul had a brief little thing floating about him waking up and smoking. Paul pieced them together. But John added the inspired line. In the 60's to be turned on was not only sexual in connotation. It was also a phrase linked to drug use. You were introduced, or turned on, to a drug. And then they added that amazing orchestral crescendo in the space before and after Paul's snippet of song. George Martin worked it in there in the space provided. Together Martin, Paul and John recorded one of rock's masterpieces. And so it rests here at number 10 on my Great Beatles Songs list. Go listen to it. Tune in. Turn on. Drop out. Groovy.