10 of the Weirdest Beatles Songs
Choosing 10 of the weirdest Beatles songs is challenging. The Fab Four produced many strange tunes that have left fans scratching their heads for decades.
Once The Beatles stopped touring, they spent more time in the recording studio and experimented. They’d also discovered LSD and liked smoking marijuana. Here are the top 10 weirdest Beatles songs.
10. ‘Mr. Moonlight’
“Mr. Moonlight” is a strange love song. The way John Lennon sings the verses is also a bit weird. The person in the tune is thanking the moon for giving them their love. It’s not an ordinary romantic song, and the melody is jarring. It’s also one of the most often-forgotten Beatles songs.
9. ‘Nowhere Man’
“Nowhere Man” could be about someone who doesn’t belong, but it’s still weird. The beginning verse paints a picture of someone out of a story like Alice in Wonderland. “He’s a real nowhere man/ Sitting in his nowhere land/ Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” The song can be interpreted in many different ways. No wonder the song appeared in The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine cartoon.
8. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’
“Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of the weirdest Beatles songs simply for its psychedelic nature. It’s all in the opening lyrics: “Turn off your mind/ Relax and float down stream/ It is not dying/ It is not dying/ Lay down all thoughts/ Surrender to the void.” It’s unknown exactly what John is trying to tell listeners.
7. ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’
Many people thought “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was a euphemism for LSD. However, John got the name from his son Julian. The boy came home from school one day with a picture he drew called “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” John ran with that and turned it into a psychedelic song. There’s a ton of imagery depicted that doesn’t quite make sense. It’s like one big dream sequence.
6. ‘Fixing a Hole’
Paul McCartney said the concept of The Beatles’ “Fixing a Hole” is both metaphysical and physical. Everything changed once he took LSD for the first time. He started seeing a little blue dot every time her closed his eyes. There was a metaphysical idea of a hole, the one he plugs whenever he writes a song, and a physical one that appears whenever he closes his eyes. Whatever inspired Paul to write the song, it’s weird. It’s like a thousand different thoughts are firing off at once.
5. ‘Your Mother Should Know’
“Your Mother Should Know” is a random song that says nothing except “your mother should know.” The melody is strange, and the lyrics are only variations of each other. “Let’s all get up and dance to a song/ That was a hit before your mother was born/ Though she was born a long, long time ago/ Your mother should know (Your mother should)/ Your mother should know (Know).”
4. ‘I am the Walrus’
Like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “I am the Walrus” is a non-sensical dream-like psychedelic song. From the beginning, nothing makes sense: “I am he as you are he as you are me/ And we are all together/ See how they run like pigs from a gun/ See how they fly/ I’m crying.” The ending swirl of sounds is jarring too.
3. ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
“Strawberry Fields Forever” is at least centered around a place (a real place, too), but other than that, the song doesn’t make any sense and has some of the weirdest lyrics: “No one I think is in my tree/ I mean, it must be high or low/ That is, you can’t, you know, tune in but it’s all right/ That is, I think it’s not too bad.”
2. ‘Glass Onion’
On “Glass Onion,” The Beatles deliberately tried to be weird. They referenced their other songs, including “Strawberry Fields” and “Lady Madonna.” Like most of the songs on this list, the lyrics are random and psychedelic. “Looking through the bent back tulips/ To see how the other half lives/ Looking through a glass onion.”
1. ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’
The lyrics of “Happiness is a Warm Gun” seem to tell a story, but they don’t. In the beginning verses, John sings: “She’s well-acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand/ Like a lizard on a window pane/ The man in the crowd with the multicolored mirrors/ On his hobnail boots.” What does “happiness is a warm gun” mean?
Some of the weirdest Beatles songs are hard to figure out. However, that’s why The Beatles recorded them. They liked that fans didn’t understand what they were saying and didn’t know themselves most of the time. That’s the magic of The Beatles, though. You can dissect all these songs until you’re blue in the face, but no one will ever pin them down.
