10 Perfect Beatles Songs With No Flaws

When the Fabs decided that they would no longer play shows around the world, it wasn't clear what was going to happen next. They knew that they still wanted to work together in some capacity, but what do you do when you're one of the biggest acts in the world and you don't even play shows? While the press had a field day spreading rumors of a possible breakup, John Lennon was working quietly on one of the Beatles greatest psychedelic songs.

Upon first showing it to the rest of the band, Strawberry Fields Forever was supposed to be an acoustic folk song, inspired by John's history of playing in the titular fields when he was a young boy in Liverpool. Even though this may have been inspired by the past, it'd be stretching to call the sound of this song nostalgic or anything. After stringing together two separate takes with different instruments, this became one of the Beatles most intense recordings, giving way to instruments like a swordmandel, all while John sang about not quite fitting in and feeling like an outcast in his hometown.

This only drove McCartney harder to write something even better, eventually coming up with Penny Lane to describe his own take on Liverpool. Both of these songs may be about the same topic, but the actual tone of both of them may as well be taking place on two separate planets. Who knows? Maybe this was the first instance where we started to hear Lennon and McCartney slowly drifting apart as songwriters.