10 Classic Rock Songs You Didn't Realize Were Incredibly Dark

Ever since the Beatles' breakup, Paul McCartney has always been singled out as the lightweight in the songwriting department. While his partnership with John Lennon gave us some of the greatest rock songs of all time, he has also been cast as the schmaltzy one in the group, dipping his toes into ballads like Yesterday and not having the same sort of bite that came from John or George Harrison. If you take a look closer though, some of those saccharine ballads are a lot darker than you think.

During the sessions for Abbey Road, most of the band got tired of hearing Maxwell's Silver Hammer being played over and over again, with one of the biggest earworms of Paul's career. Going through the lyrics though, this is essentially an extremely black comedy tune, as Paul paints us a picture of Maxwell being a murderer who kills people with his hammer at every chance he gets. He invites a girl out to the movies before hitting her over the head, and when he gets back to school and gets detention, he manages to kill the teacher while she isn't looking too.

By the time the police start getting involved, Maxwell has to eventually appear in court and it looks like he's going to be serving time in jail, before creeping up from behind the judge and killing him before he can even read the sentencing. The song might be good enough for a kid's singalong, but this is the kind of body count that could give Patrick Bateman a run for his money.