1 Overlooked Gem Song From Every Beatles Album
5. Baby, You’re A Rich Man - Magical Mystery Tour
As any purist will tell you, Magical Mystery Tour is NOT a true Beatles album. It’s an EP collected together with a bunch of singles and B-sides from a similar period.
However, it is a neat way to round up songs from the band’s psychedelic era that aren’t available on other albums. Plus it’s a good excuse to discuss another overlooked gem so we’re including it here. Your writer only brings it up because he doesn’t want the other Beatles nerds to think he doesn’t know…
Anyway, Baby You’re A Rich Man fuses a John Lennon verse to a Paul McCartney chorus, producing a decadent and exotic sounding slice of psychedelic pop.
This meditation on wealth, celebrity and “beautiful people” employs a similar question and answer device to With A Little Help From my friends and a clavioline on oboe setting mimics Indian instrumentation to lend the track an Eastern flavour.
Lyrically the song tries to have its cake and eat it, trying to suggest a kind of utopian inclusivity through Beatles music whilst simultaneously sending up self satisfied hipsters. Nonetheless Baby You’re A Rich Man is one of The Beatles most trippy and seductive moments.