5 Best Beatles Songs With Women’s Names in the Title
Several of The Beatles‘ songs have women’s names in their titles. One of these songs was inspired by John Lennon’s mother in addition to Yoko Ono. Another one of these songs was rumored to be about drugs.
5. ‘Martha My Dear’
The White Album includes plenty of forward-looking moments, as the album embraced heavy-metal music, avant-garde music, and Marxist class analysis. On the other hand, it also includes many nostalgic, old-fashioned moments. “Martha My Dear,” one of Paul McCartney’s many loving tributes to vaudeville, might be one of The Beatles’ most famous musical anachronisms.
4. ‘Julia’
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed The Beatles’ “Julia.” “Julia was my mother,” he said. “But it was sort of a combination of Yoko and my mother blended into one.
“That was written in India,” he added. “On The White Album. And all the stuff on The White Album was written in India while we were supposedly giving money to Maharishi, which we never did. We got our mantra, we sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food and writing all those songs. We wrote tons of songs in India.”
3. ‘Eleanor Rigby’
In All We Are Saying, John was asked about the origin of “Eleanor Rigby.” “It’s hard to describe, even with the clarity of memory, the moment the apple falls,” he said. “The thing will start moving along at a speed of its own, then you wake up at the end of it and have this whole thing on paper, you know?
“Who said what to whom as we were writing, I don’t know,” he continued. “I do know that George Harrison was there when we came up with ‘Ah, look at all the lonely people.'” John gave himself credit for most of “Eleanor Rigby” while acknowledging contributions from George and Paul.
2. ‘Michelle’
“Michelle” is a pretty ballad with some light elements of French pop music. It’s one of the most remembered songs from Rubber Soul. Paul McCartney throws a few French lyrics into the song, encapsulating a time when French culture was chic in the United Kingdom and the United States. Part of what makes Rubber Soul such a great album is that The Beatles were willing to go beyond their American and British influences to draw inspiration from other countries, like France and India.
1. ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” has received plenty of attention for its connection to Lewis Carroll’s books and its supposed drug references. The central figure of the song, Lucy, deserves more examination.
Who is she? A dream girl? A messiah? John’s version of Carroll’s Alice? Why is she in the sky and why does he live in a wonderland? These questions are unanswerable, and that’s what makes “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” so fascinating.
Many bands released songs with women’s names in their titles and The Beatles made some of the best of them.
