10 Song Meanings Everyone Gets Wrong

There's a good chance that no one can really get to the bottom of what most psychedelic songs are going on about. Most of the trippy rock songs of the '60s you could safely assume were written while under the influence, so it would make sense that you could only understand these songs if you were a little bit buzzed yourself. Which is strange considering that one of the more celebrated songs of the psychedelic period had nothing to do with drugs at all.

While most of Sgt. Peppers marks the point where the Beatles really started to experiment with the power between Abbey Road Studio's walls, John Lennon first came up with the idea for Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds from his son after school one day. After taking a break from the studio, John had noticed a drawing that his son Julian had done of one of his classmates named Lucy, with the title Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. Loving the imagery of his son's work, Lennon set about making an Alice in Wonderland like fairy tale, with newspaper taxis and marmalade skies taking you off into another land.

That's not what the papers wanted to hear though, noticing very quickly that the main words in the title seem to spell out LSD, which Lennon always refuted when asked about it. Then again, this is a song that can kind of go both ways though. If it's actually about the drawing, it's a nice piece of tone painting, but if it's about drugs, you're in for one of the most intense trips you've ever experienced.