Keith Urban’s Favorite Beatles Song Is a Hidden Gem
You can discover a lot about a musician by learning their favorite Beatles song. Keith Urban said one of The Beatles’ songs has “an exquisite arrangement.” It makes sense that a country singer would like the tune in question. Sadly, the world at large doesn’t have the opinion taste as Urban.
Keith Urban’s favorite Beatles song is from ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
During a 2009 interview with Cleveland.com, Urban was asked to pick his favorite Beatles song. He chose “She’s Leaving Home.” “She’s Leaving Home” is a ballad from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and it’s one of the most ignored songs in the Fab Four’s discography.
“What an exquisite arrangement,” Urban said. “The originality of that band continues to dumbfound me. I don’t know where they were drawing from, but it was such a magnificently original place.” “She’s Leaving Home” definitely borrows a lot of elements from Western classical music, but The Beatles were masters of taking old ideas and making them their own.
Paul McCartney said that the song was inspired by a story he read in the newspaper
Urban wanted to know what inspired The Beatles. Paul McCartney was happy to oblige! In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the singer explained the origin of “She’s Leaving Home.” “John and I wrote ‘She’s Leaving Home’ together,” he remembered. “It was my inspiration.
“We’d seen a story in the newspaper about a young girl who’d left home and not been found, there were a lot of those at the time, and that was enough to give us a storyline,” he added. “So I started to get the lyrics: she slips out and leaves a note and then the parents wake up and then … It was rather poignant. I like it as a song, and when I showed it to John, he added the Greek chorus, long sustained notes, and one of the nice things about the structure of the song is that it stays on those chords endlessly.”\
Here’s another potential reason Keith Urban enjoys The Beatles’ ‘She’s Leaving Home’
Urban’s love for “She’s Leaving Home” could reflect something deeper. If classic country music is known for one thing, it’s storytelling. Artists like Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and even Urban himself are known for writing songs about fully realized characters and situations.
While “She’s Leaving Home” doesn’t have the stadium appeal of a song like “Come Together,” “Let It Be,” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” it paints a detailed picture. In one listen, you feel like you know the runaway in the song. In addition, it’s easy to understand her parents’ emotions when they realize she has left them. “She’s Leaving Home” might be a baroque pop song, but it shares some of its DNA with classic country. One can imagine Urban or one of his contemporaries doing a great cover of “She’s Leaving Home.”
“She’s Leaving Home” has mostly been forgotten but Urban saw it as the Fab Four’s finest achievement.
