10 Song Meanings EVERYONE Gets Wrong
1. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds - The Beatles
The back half of the Beatles' career is commonly referred as one of the greatest album runs of all time, and it's not necessarily that hard to see why. After Rubber Soul, the Fab Four went on a songwriting bender for the ages, going from folk rock to acid rock to some of the most incredible music ever made on albums like Abbey Road and the White Album. There was experimentation, there was inspiration, but mostly there was drugs...a lot of drugs.
During the recording of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, the band was already getting into psychedelic drugs like LSD when John Lennon took inspiration from a drawing that his son made depicting his friend Lucy. Thinking it was a beautiful turn of phrase for a song, Lennon took the opportunity to craft Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, with bits and pieces ripped straight out of the Alice in Wonderland playbook. Then again, you can tell that the allusion of not being about drugs is paper thin here.
Up until his death, Lennon always refuted the idea of this song being about drugs, only to come under fire when the key words of the title spell out LSD. Despite all of the naysayers, there has to be at least some hidden context when talking about something like newspaper taxis and tangerine trees in the verses. These aren't the kind of things that you see everyday...these are the kind of images that you see what acid opens your third eye.