Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

Robert Bunter: Little children love to listen to this delightful tale, inspired by a drawing by John's son Julian of his classmate Lucy O'Donnell, who diedva few years ago. Who among us hasn't fantasized about lazily drifting downstream in a boat while marvels unfold from the shore?

Richard Furnstein: This is the great song that helped usher in a million terrible songs. John pulls some jabberwocky out of his melting brain (tangerine skies! newspaper taxis!). It looks good on him, but doesn't quite sparkle with hack psychedelic songwriters. The chorus arrives just in time to beat the fog out of your brain.

Robert Bunter: When people (incorrectly) talk about Sgt. Pepper's as the peak Beatles masterpiece, it is songs like this they're thinking of. The melody is beautiful, and the lyrics whisk us off to a magical fairyland that somehow doesn't seem that far away. Paul did a nice job on the electric bass. If you don't take drugs, you can get the same effect by spinning around as fast as you can for a few minutes until you're dizzy and then sitting down.

Richard Furnstein: The acronym of the song's title is famously L.S.D. (less famously L.I.T.S.W.D., which isn't nearly as cool). John claimed it was an innocent mistake and that he was scanning other Beatles titles for clues, but didn't find any. You didn't look hard enough, John! What about "Not A Second Time" (N.A.S.T.) or "Roll Over Beethoven" (R.O.B.)? That's just on one album, imagine if I looked at the other albums! Lazy.