10 Weirdest Rock Songs By Legendary Artists

For as much effort as John Lennon put into writing Beatles lyrics, he was aware not to take things too seriously. Despite writing intimate portraits of his childhood like Strawberry Fields Forever or Help!, the lyrics were more about throwing together images than writing a coherent story. So when he got wind of a teacher trying to dissect every line that the Beatles wrote, it was time to mess with some heads on I Am the Walrus.

Before we even get to the lyrics though, the entire backing track of this record is a sight to behold, bringing together string sections alongside rock instruments and making a psychedelic experience out of the two. While songs like In My Life may have had a beautiful message behind it, that does not apply here at all, with most of the lines just being images thrown together for the hell of it, as John talks about sitting on a cornflake and penguins beating up Edgar Allan Poe.

Since this was also around the time that the band were set to release their movie Magical Mystery Tour, this feels like the thesis statement of what the movie was supposed to be, taking all these different pieces of music and somehow making them fit together into something that's coherent. While the movie ended up being too chaotic for its own good, I Am the Walrus captures a controlled form of chaos that very few bands have done before or since.