With another blizzard hitting the New England area this week and Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow earlier this month, we are still smack dab in the middle of winter despite the calendar flipping to March this weekend.
With warmer weather nowhere in sight around here, let’s take a trip across the pond to Liverpool and look at five Beatles songs that evoke images of the spring and sun.
One of the songs most synonymous with George Harrison’s legacy as a Beatle, “Here Comes the Sun” is a quintessential summer song and a go-to for anyone who makes playlists for the warm weather.
The highlight for me is always the Moog synth counter melody after the bridge during the third verse. It lifts the song to an ethereal level and makes the song feel complete.
For an added bonus, keep listening to side two and you’ll come across “Sun King,” a song featuring beautiful three-part harmonies singing a nonsensical jumble of the romance languages.
While rain may not be everyone’s favorite type of weather, it may be an improvement over the current conditions.
This non-album track was the B-side of “Paperback Writer” but has plenty of merit on its own. Recorded during the “Revolver” album sessions — a record known for being one of the Beatles’ most experimental — “Rain” features the Beatles’ first use of backmasking.
Lennon’s lyrics talk about how he isn’t too bothered by the rain, much like many wouldn’t be if it drove away the snow for the year.
A song solely about being in love in the sun, no track in the Beatles’ catalog celebrates warm weather quite as much as this one.
This jaunty piano-driven tune goes for broke on enthusiasm, especially in the final chorus and outro. The choruses are accented by Ringo Starr’s cymbals, and the stomping bass line keeps the song from losing any of the energy gained from its building intro.
Sometimes lost amongst other McCartney acoustic tracks from the “White Album,” such as “Blackbird” and “I Will,” “Mother Nature’s Son” is a gorgeous song with the strongest nature imagery on the list.
The lo-fi minimalist feel to much of the track builds upon the theme, while George Martin’s added orchestration later brings the song to a grander level that sits perfectly on top of the simple foundation formed by McCartney.
This track off of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” doesn’t have anything in particular to do with spring or warmer weather. In fact, some would argue that the next track, “Good Morning Good Morning,” would have made a far more obvious choice for this list.
Still, “Sgt. Pepper’s” is one of the Beatles’ sonically brightest albums. “Lovely Rita” may be the most exuberant song on the record, with its high-pitched acoustic guitar intro and a soaring vocal riff from McCartney starting the track on a high note.
The reverb-drenched kazoos and purposefully out of tune piano solo give the song a certain uncanny feeling that transforms the track from a simple album cut to a three-minute-long fever dream.