Song Meanings by Band:

            Forums

     Requests

           Links

    Random Song

  Submit an
      Interpretation

Beatles - A Day In The Life Song Meanings

1 2 3 Next >

When John Lennon wrote this song, he was reading the newspaper, and basically just wrote about the articles that caught his attention. The part in between the orchestra swells, however, I'm not sure about. But I would assume that was his day up until that point.

Submitted by: mojofilterloco
Added: 2005-11-15 23:23:13     Rating:

I just had to laugh - I saw the photograph...

What is it about the human condition that draws our attention so fully when faced with tragedy? We've all been in traffic jams wondering what could be holding us up - only to find that people are slowing down to watch the remainder of a crash - Why? He laughs - not only about this, but the fact they have taken the time to print a photograph of the wreck for everyone else to see - it's like a black comedy in which we are all a part.

A crowd of people turned away...

Strangely, and in contrast with the first verse, the people are offended by this film - perhaps a graphic representation of the truth of war. they find it distasteful, ironic really, as they will happily accept the situation in the first verse. War IS horrific. that is the nature of it. But war is a concept - it is PEOPLE who are monsters. without people, war cannot be.

i used this song as a tool for teaching english to some elementary chinese students, and I am lucky to have some very imaginitve people in the class. The crescendo in the middle of this song gave them numerous emotions. (bear in mind they have NEVER heard this song)
Some emotions they came to (with some help) were

discomfort
uneasy
oppressive
loss of control
pressure

I asked why they thought the beatles would do this, in context with the rest of the lyrics.

"Because this is what life is"

A short sharp shock, on many levels. I could not and cannot argue with this interpretation. Again, this is from someone with little english, and little or no experience of what we would consider classic music.

Four thousand holes in blackburn lancashire

Pointless news, in a paper meant to inform.

The whole song, concreted by the last verse smacks of a big 'in' joke. The joke that is modern society, the way we receive information, the information that is purveyed.

John once quoted
"the gift we have today is communication. let's use it."

"I'd love to turn you on...."

Turn us on. our minds. are we in fact switched off? the evidence provided throughout this song would suggest so.

As far as my feelings for this song go, I have only scratched the surface. Listen to the song. Hear it.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2005-11-22 21:06:20     Rating:

"I'd love to turn you on" was a reference to drug use. In fact, it was the first time any major band had said such a direct remark and it was banned from the BBC radio.

The section in the middle of the song was a lyric Paul was working on but it was going nowhere. They found it to fit nicely where John was struggling to join the two verse sections together.

Submitted by: inpeace
Added: 2005-11-27 15:50:45     Rating:

Well, this may be shocking if you've never heard the theory of Paul McCartney's death. If you haven't, look up "I buried paul" on the web and you'll find a lot of info on the subject but the song a day in the life adds to it it is about the fatal crash that supposedly killed Paul mcartney a whole segment tells about the crash if you read the lyrics:

"He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They’d seen his face before,
Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of lords."

Submitted by: Adub
Added: 2006-02-02 19:13:06     Rating:

A day in the life

Here's a little help for the crescendo/decrescendo section - If you listen very closely at the beginning of the counting you can here a voice counting the measured musical time. This time was originally just empty space. Needing it filled, the band decided on the rise and fall of orchestral sound.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-02-28 12:53:05     Rating:

The "he blew his mind out" bit is another drug refrence and not literal.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-03-12 13:10:00     Rating:

First of all this song isn't about fucking drugs it's about articles that caught Lennon's attention. The Beatles weren't all about drugs.

Submitted by: CroftD1
Added: 2006-03-14 13:59:11     Rating:

I'm sure someone is going to mention the VERY end eventually, I am just glad it is ME! Any ways the final cord hits and trails out foorr aaaa looooonnngg tiiimmmee. Then a high pitched note is played what George Martin described as something to annoy your dog. Then there is a bunch of jibberish, which if you play back words says "I want to 'UCK you like Super Man" repeated over and over. Not F@ck but 'uck. Of course EVERTHING is a hidden message, but this one is real ,I tried it and it really says that whether some people like it or not.

And by the way my mom grew up in the 60's. No I'm not one of those 'Every thing the Beatles did was drugs' people. But 'blowing your mind out' is to take a hit of acid whether he meant it as a reference or not, it really doesn't matter to me because it's not the point of the song.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-03-16 14:50:00     Rating:

The beginning was based on two stories John Lennon read in the Daily Mail newspaper: Guinness heir Tara Browne dying when he smashed his lotus into a parked van, and an article in the UK Daily Express in early 1967 which told of how the Blackburn Roads Surveyor had counted 4000 holes in the roads of Blackburn and commented that the volume of material needed to fill them in was enough to fill the Albert Hall. Lennon took some liberties with the Tara Browne story - he changed it so he "Blew his mind out in the car."

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-03-22 16:57:35     Rating:

4000 holes were the graves of murdered children, they're rather small.

Submitted by: unlabled_00
Added: 2006-04-08 03:05:23     Rating:

I thought it was great how Paul McCartney was able to write a song about newspaper articles. Look to the above interpretations to see what those were about, they were covered quite well.

About the swelling orchestra: Many of you might not know this, but this is actually a co-written piece. This is hard to tell because all of the lyrics and the majority of the music is Paul's. Lennon was p****d off at Paul at the time and so when they wrote the song, in his parts he just had an orchestra start from the lowest note and go to its highest note.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-04-08 19:35:38     Rating:

This was actually two seperate songs to begin with, and where you hear the "alarm clock" going off, it is actually the studio timer for John's part, then Paul's starts with the "Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head..."

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-04-13 03:31:58     Rating:

unlabeld: Are you SURE this is Paul's work? I'm fairly certain the majority is John's. I may be wrong, but as a rule, whoever sung it, wrote it.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-05-04 20:38:41     Rating:

Well, Yellow Submarine was written by John and Paul, yet it was Ringo who sung it.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-05-16 21:04:07     Rating:

This song is about drugs. Flat out about psychedelics ("Turn you on", "went into a dream", "blew his mind out"). The cresendo is meant to mirror the onset of an acid trip. The resoundind C chord on the piano at the end is played by all four Beatles and represents the astonishing realization when peaking on psychedelics.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-06-07 20:47:59     Rating:

The song is about war, life, death, drugs, pretty much everything that has been said. When John read the news articles, I imagine he interpreted the articles to mean for war and life in general. The drug references were meant to show how drugs, especially acid gives you the feeling of "vibes", you get the impression of people being imperfect creatures, with war and fighting. The blew his mind out in a car could also mean someone committed suicide, as well as drugs. The 4000 holes is probably an interpretation of graves of soldiers in a battle, shallow ones since they are rather small. Everything said has a double meaning, sometimes triple or quadruple(you know what I mean). So I think that all of the interpretations are correct.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-06-12 21:22:05     Rating:

"He blew his mind out in a car; he didn't notice that the light had changed"; this definitely refers the the accident that killed the Guinness heir, as described in a previous message. I just came back from London, and through research was able to confirm that, and have a picture of the lights where the accident happened in Chelsea, London, the exact neighbourhood the Beatles lived in at the time.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-07-17 03:13:45     Rating:

Ok, first off, this song isn't about anything, not drugs, not war, or anything else. If there's one thing I hate, its when people think to much of a simple song. Its like that photo of bob dylan, it was a picture of him reading a book or something, anyway people were so interested in this one photo, they kept asking questions about it, like, "what was going on in your mind when you were doing this?" it was just a picture of him reading a book, nothing special about it. But people went nuts over trying to imagine what he was thinking. Well, I hope I have made a point. Cya.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2006-08-08 18:45:00     Rating:

In regards to the comment about yellow submarine. Ringo helped write it. I thought I'd point that out...And a day in the life is mainly John and I'd bet my life on it. This song is about everything really, human nature, drugs, war, people, etc. It's an amazing song enough said.

Submitted by: BeatleDoc
Added: 2006-10-11 14:48:32     Rating:

Some of the interpretations of this song are way off base. This song is actually comprised of two songs that John and Paul put together. John constantly read newspapers about world events and was often fascinated by them. When he says, "I read the news today, oh boy," he means it quite literally.

The first verse is about the newspaper story about the guiness heir's (lucky man who made the grade) fatal car accident. He ran an intersection and was killed. At the scene, the passersby thought they recognized him as someone famous.

The second verse is literally about a movie that John had saw. The movie was a flop, but John found it interesting because he had read the book. The last line in the second verse is a throwaway line, and true to john's love to put sexual innuendo in his songs, it is simple and suggestive.

Originally, the song had 24 bars of dead time that John didn't know what to do with. It started with an alarm clock that had went off in the studio (by accident) and was left on the four track tapes. Paul was working on a simple song about a typical hectic day in a working joe's life. He sings the third verse about this uneventful morning.

The final verse was about another newspaper story John had read. The english government had spent a fortune counting potholes in the streets of blackburn lancashire. He thought it was absurd to spend the money that way instead of fixing the streets.

It really is that simple. The crescendo's of the orchestra were paul's idea to give the song drama. The final notes were made by bringing a bunch of grand pianos in the studio and having all of the beatles, george martin and geoff emerick pound the chord and then turn the recording volume up gradually to make the chord last as long as possible.

1 2 3 Next >

Submit your interpretation!

Discuss this group in the Beatles forum

Email me when this band is updated

Back to Beatles Song Meanings

Home

Users Online
Magnoodle
There are 20 guests and 1 registered users online.