It’s Impossible to Hear Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’ Without Thinking of 1 Beatles Song

Artists from different genres and eras can create similar songs. Rihanna‘s “Diamonds” has some interesting similarities to a song from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Both tracks have the same central theme, even if that isn’t obvious at first.

Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’ was co-written by a pop star and a pair of important producers

Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Storleer Eriksen are a pair of musical producers collectively known as Stargate. Stargate produced big singles like Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable,” Selena Gomez’s “Come & Get It,” and Katy Perry’s “Firework.” They’ve also worked on several Rihanna hits, including “Diamonds,” which they co-wrote with pop star Sia. During a 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hermansen said they wanted to write something different, and Sia spontaneously came up with a lyric about “diamonds in the sky.”

There is one other pop hit with similar lyrics: The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The tunes will forever share a musical kinship. They might work well in a mashup together.

Why Rihanna’s song and The Beatles’ song are more alike than it seems

Of course, “Diamonds” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” have major differences. The former is a synth-pop ballad while the latter is a psychedelic song, though it’s definitely more of a psychedelic pop song than a psychedelic rock song. While they’re both a little abstract, “Diamonds” is considerably more straightforward.

“Diamonds” is a love song while “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is more of a surreal tableau. However, they both express a desire for love. The amorous nature of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is just more subtle.

John Lennon said The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ was about Yoko Ono

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes an interview from 1980. In that interview, John said “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was inspired by Alice in Wonderland. It was also a love song of sorts. “There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me — a ‘girl with kaleidoscope eyes’ who would come out of the sky,” he recalled. “It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn’t met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be ‘Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.'”

John shut down an infamous rumor about the song. “It was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD,” he said. “Until somebody pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? It’s not an acid song. The imagery was Alice in the boat. 

“And also the image of this female who would come and save me — this secret love that was going to come one day,” John added. “So it turned out to be Yoko, though, and I hadn’t met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have.”

“Diamonds” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” sound very different but they’re both about romantic longing.