magical mystery tour songs ranked

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Magical Mystery Tour Songs Ranked

Magical Mystery Tour  is a record by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a double EP in the United Kingdom and an LP in the United States. It includes the soundtrack to the 1967 television film of the same name. The EP was issued in the UK on 8 December 1967 on the Parlophone label, while the Capitol Records LP release in the US occurred on 27 November and featured an additional five songs that were originally released as singles that year. In 1976, Parlophone released the eleven-track LP in the UK. Despite widespread media criticism of the Magical Mystery Tour film, the soundtrack was a critical and commercial success. In the UK, it topped the EPs chart compiled by Record Retailer and peaked at number 2 on the magazine’s singles chart (later the UK Singles Chart) behind “Hello, Goodbye”. The album topped Billboard’s Top LPs listings for eight weeks and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1969. With the international standardization of the Beatles’ catalogue in 1987,  Magical Mystery Tour  became the only Capitol-generated LP to supersede the band’s intended format and form part of their core catalogue. Here are all of Magical Mystery Tour songs ranked.

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“I hate to put this track last, it’s a great instrumental adding new instrumentation gradually with really interesting psychedelic effects but if I have to compare with other tracks it doesn’t have same compositional quality as the other ones. I still think it’s underrated though”

10. Your Mother Should Know

“I know what some of you are saying, I understand but the melody is so goddamn awesome that it would be a disservice to put it so low. The organ is so ominous and joyful at the same time. That Bass line is awesome. Pretty underrated. This song just makes me so happy, I can’t explain it”

9. Magical Mystery Tour

“Perfect start to the album with great vocals from the whole group, McCartney shines with his bass fills in this one. This has always been a personal favourite of mine because of the structure and tempo changes”

8. Blue Jay Way

“Creepy and nightmare inducing is the best way to describe this Beatles track. I didn’t like this song initially due to the song strenuous repetition but it has grown on me. There is a flanger effect which really gives the track a serious punch especially on the drums”

See more:  The Beatles Albums Ranked

7. Baby You’re a Rich Man

“Great sing a long song with a crazy Clavioline instrumental. This song just proves how tight The Beatles were as a band with the pounding drums and the melodic bass being particular highlights”

6. The Fool On the Hill

“Great social commentary with a tasteful brass arrangement and one of Paul’s best vocal performances, whats not to love? This is the most elegantly structured song on the album, pure genius.”

5. Hello Goodbye

“Gorgeous pop song by Paul and is quite well performed as well. Ringo’s drums fills are dynamite, another reason why he is one of the best drummers. Oh and don’t forget Pauls bass arpeggios, oh and what about George’s guitar riff. I could go on but it speaks for itself”

4. All You Need Is Love

“An anthem for the hippie generation and for good reason this songs message is timeless. The string and horn arrangements are just beautiful. I feel guilty putting it this low but there is a lot of competition”

See more:  The Beatles Songs Ranked

3. Penny Lane

“That key change is the entire reason why this song is awesome. It would be good enough for the lyrics, melody or horns but that key change makes this track a home run. Awesome stuff”

2. I Am the Walrus

“Nonsense lyrics and dense production make for one of the most captivating Beatles tracks. Every member is on their A game and the psychedelic effects are the cherry on top. Its like a fucked up version of Alice in Wonderland”

1. Strawberry Fields Forever

“This must of been so bizarre when it came out in 1967. Beautiful, haunting, daring is only a few words to describe this track. Ringo’s syncopation and fills are so good on this track. Lennon said there were two songs that were from the heart. This one and Help!”

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“Magical Mystery Tour” – Songs Ranked

Some Beatles fans are quick to shun “Magical Mystery Tour” – they claim it’s not officially an album, and it doesn’t succeed in its concept quite as much as Sgt Pepper’s did. While I agree with that last sentiment, I think not including it among their albums is a load of rubbish.

It’s one of their most underrated albums, with a plethora of insanely good tracks that I keep coming back to. It’s not all sunshine and roses though – how would I rank every song?

You can check out some of my related blog posts below:

11 – The Fool On The Hill

I’m so sorry to anyone who likes this track, but I want to cut my ears off with a pair of rusty scissors whenever that stupid flute comes in.

The rest of “The Fool On The Hill” isn’t great either, as it’s one of McCartney’s most boring songs. One of the only Beatles songs, especially in their later years, that I can confidently say I dislike.

10 – Flying

“Flying” is a fun interlude track, but nothing more.

I think it’s the only instrumental song in the Beatles’ discography other than “Revolution 9” … no points for guessing which track I like more.

9 – Blue Jay Way

I do appreciate George Harrison’s contributions to the later Beatles albums, but “Blue Jay Way” is a little weird by his standards.

It sounds almost confrontational and threatening, and I have to be in the right frame of mind to really enjoy it.

8 – Hello, Goodbye

Twelve-year-old me really loved this song for how whimsical and bubbly it is, but nowadays I think “Hello, Goodbye” is overplayed and slightly overrated.

It’s still incredibly fun, and the outro where everyone’s having a blast is so infectious and danceable.

7 – Magical Mystery Tour

The title track and intro to the album, and while it doesn’t quite pack as much of a punch as Sgt. Pepper’s did it certainly kickstarts the record with a bang.

It clues you in that things will be a little more off-beat and psychedelic this time around, and Ringo’s thumping drums are pretty great.

6 – Baby, You’re A Rich Man

I know “Baby, You’re A Rich Man” more for featuring in “The Social Network” than for being on this album, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t great.

Lennon’s vocals are stellar, and the weird organ sound in my left ear doesn’t annoy me nearly as much as I thought it would.

5 – Your Mother Should Know

One of the Beatles’ most underrated songs, “Your Mother Should Know” is a gorgeous ballad that crescendos all the way to the end.

The backing vocals are exceptional, and McCartney’s vocals and piano work give it an old-school vibe.

All-Time Great

4 – penny lane.

Four “All-Time Great” songs on one album?! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many GOATed tracks in one place … yet another reason why “Magical Mystery Tour” is so underrated.

“Penny Lane” was McCartney’s ode to one of his childhood locations in Liverpool (a bus stop he frequented, I think), and it’s one of the band’s most fun songs as a result. The woodwind and brass instrumentals are great, and they work together with McCartney’s piano comping remarkably well.

3 – I Am The Walrus

John Lennon wrote “I Am The Walrus” after he found out his old primary school were studying Beatles lyrics in their English class, and I just find that hilarious.

It’s one of the weirdest and wackiest songs I’ve ever heard, and it could only work when spawned from Lennon’s genius. The outro, where everything gets thrown at you at once, is one of the musical highlights in the Beatles’ whole discography.

2 – All You Need Is Love

I love it when the Beatles go back to their roots on a song, and “All You Need Is Love” is arguably their definitive peace / love song.

This has Lennon-isms all over it, from the changing time signature to the playful jab at “She Loves You” at the end, and it’s definitely one of my favourite songs ever.

I think this was one of the first songs to ever be broadcast in technicolour across the entire world as well, so that’s quite an achievement.

1 – Strawberry Fields Forever

The answer to “What is my favourite Beatles song?” is always hotly contested between three songs – “A Day In The Life”, “Something”, and on days like today I would say it’s “Strawberry Fields Forever”.

This was Lennon’s nostalgic response to McCartney’s “Penny Lane”, and it contains too many genius musical ideas for me to mention. I don’t know what Lennon was smoking at the time, but he managed to create one of the top 10 greatest songs ever written.

Aaaaand that’s my list! You can check out some of my latest blog posts below:

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I seem to be on a hot streak of Ace Attorney-adjacent games at the moment – at first it was “Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane” which had a magical focus, and now “Murders On The Yangtze River” gave a historical Chinese spin on the genre. Time will tell which of the two I prefer,…

1988: The Year In Music

1988 – A ceasefire between Iran and Iraq takes effect after 8 years of war. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, effectively head of state of the Soviet Union. Benazir Bhutto is named Prime Minister of Pakistan, the first female leader of a Muslim country. The news was all over…

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We’ve moved away from the Stand-of-the-week adventure of “Stardust Crusaders” and into the small town mystery of “Diamond Is Unbreakable” … and I think this might be the best JoJo Part yet! There are twenty-five episodes in total (if you combine the multi-part stories), so how would I rank them all? You can check out…

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Paul McCartney’s 80 Best Songs, Ranked

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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On the occasion of Paul McCartney’s 80th birthday weekend, anyone reading this is probably thinking the same thing: Only 80 Paul McCartney songs? The hope, of course, is that he lives to 120, in order to provide a hook for a much easier-to-narrow-down list of his 120 finest. But 80 is just enough to cover the breadth as well as greatness of the 20th century’s (and beyond’s) greatest journeyman singer-songwriter, from the Beatles to today.

This critical list of major, world-changing accomplishments and delightful trifles runs the gamut from “The Long and Winding Road” (sorry to anyone who still has PTSD from the Phil Spector arrangement) to “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road” (sorry, just generally, on that one). We know what you’re thinking: Will “Wonderful Christmastime” be on the list? No — we’re not monsters, all right? But you may find a guilty pleasure or three — if that should really even be a thing  — amid dozens of selections as worthy of veneration as anything to hit a classical concert hall or juke joint in the last hundred years. Here’s to Sir, with love.

McCartney said recently that this White Album track is “still one of my favorites of the melodies I’ve written.” Listen to what the man said — he has good taste. While he declared that “I Will” is “a song about the joy of love,” listen more closely and it’s an imagined joy of love, written from a still-solitary fellow to his future beloved, whom he hasn’t met yet. It’s perhaps telling that McCartney wrote this while he was in the last stages of his relationship with Jane Asher, not so very long before he met the Lovely Linda.

'She Loves You'

The rare pop song from the point of view of a love broker . McCartney (then at the peak of his direct collaborating with John Lennon, in 1964) says he may have been influenced to write from the point of view of “a middleman, an agent, a go-between” by being aware of, if not having read, the novel “The Go-Between” at the time. But you’re not really thinking about the songwriterly conceit of second-person pronouns when you listen to “She Loves You,” are you? You’re singing along with those “yeah, yeah, yeahs.” Or shrieking.

'That Was Me'

McCartney was at his most lyrically backward-looking on 2008’s “Memory Almost Full.” The peak of that was “That Was Me,” a song that treats nostalgia as a romp, not something to get too bittersweet about. “In a cellar, on TV, that was me,” he sings in one line, casually making the leap from the Cavern Club to “The Ed Sullivan Show” in a single bound — “the same me that stands here now / When I think that all this stuff / Can make a life that’s pretty hard to take it in, that was me.” It’s as if he’s doing his own version of that Chris Farley “SNL” sketch: “Remember when I was in the Beatles? That was awesome.”

'Martha My Dear'

Find yourself a partner who looks at you the way Paul McCartney looks at (and writes about) his English sheepdog. “At the time, almost no one listening to the song knew that Martha was a dog,” McCartney says in the “Lyrics” book. Over time, virtually everyone learned that, but they may not have sussed that “actually, as the song proceeds, Martha morphs into a person” — specifically, a relative of his who confided in him about an illicit tryst. “I’m the only person who knew the song was about having an affair, and that gives a line like ‘When you find yourself in the thick of it’ an added layer of poignancy.” The beauty of the White Album was that, while a song like this might have seemed too eccentric or slight squeezed into a single album, “Martha” got its own breathing room amid the double-LP expanse… and endured enough to leave us learning about its double-meanings decades later.

'The Song We Were Singing'

In the liner notes for 1997’s “Flaming Pie” (his collaboration with Jeff Lynne) McCartney wrote of this song, “I was remembering the ’60s, sitting around late at night, dossing, smoking pipes, drinking wine… jawing, talking about the cosmic solution… It’s that time in your life when you got a chance for all that.” But the chorus isn’t so much about middle-of-the-night bull sessions… it’s about how, if you’re a certain type of personality, all chats and all roads ultimately lead back to music. Maybe you can relate.

'Love Me Do'

Yoda did not come up with this song title. Although Lennon and McCartney were writing very collaboratively at that point, the offbeat verbiage seems to be a product of the Macca imagination, with plenty of valuable input as well from his partner. “John came up with this riff, the little harmonica riff,” McCartney said. “It’s so simple. There’s nothing to it; it’s a will-o’-the-wisp song. But there’s a terrific sense of longing in the bridge which, combined with that harmonica, touches the soul in some way.” McCartney is a man who does know his middle-eights. Released in 1962, it “wasn’t a major hit,” as McCartney says, but it the one that the most attentive fans of the time heard first, before the explosion to come. And their wish in the title became our command.

'The Back Seat of My Car'

Before Meat Loaf had “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” McCartney had his own paean to what can happen in cramped automotive conditions, although he extended his backseat anthem to encompass the full sweep of teenaged love, not just eroticism. In fact, it’s really a suite more than a single song, with a lot of movements swept into four and a half minutes, with McCartney practically trying to wrap an “Abbey Road” Side 2 medley into one tune. Fans have hoped in vain for decades that “Back Seat of My Car” would show up as a staple of his live sets, but apparently it’s too sweeping (or too obscure) for that. Nonetheless, in the spirit of the song, we can only tell its teen lovers: Ram on.

The song that for years assured the high school French teachers of the world that they could count on fuller classes than their faculty contemporaries.

It may still be premature to guess how any of the songs from his most recent album, the year-and-a-half-old “McCartney III,” will hold up over time. And maybe it’s showing undue favoritism to the idea of McCartney as a still-fresh force to include one of those tracks amid the classics on this list. But 2020’s “Slidin’,” unassuming as it is, is remarkable when you think of how few other performers in their late 70s could come up with such a completely natural, heavier-than-lead hard-rock number. Even when it comes to sounds usually best left to younger generations, McCartney can’t stop going back to the top of the slide.

'Let 'Em In'

Is it a song of inclusiveness… or just a party song? McCartney has indicated it’s the latter, and there’s not much to read into the list of imaginary guests he recites, which range from John Eastman to Michael Jackson to Martin Luther King Jr. (It was the latter he was referring to when he sings “Martin Luther,” not the guy who nailed the articles of faith to a door, even though we can be excused for thinking that in a song about door-knocking.) He considered this song a trifle, and, OK, we’re hard-pressed to really disagree. We’re also hard-pressed to not start marching along in time when those gentle snare-drum cadences kick in.

'Great Day'

The king of poptimism was at his sweetest, simplest and most uplifting in this “Flaming Pie” epilogue. “I liked the idea of a song saying that help is coming and there’s a bright light on the horizon,” McCartney said. “I’ve got absolutely no evidence for this, but I like to believe it.” On a down day, we’ll take it, with or without backup documentation.

'P.S. I Love You'

This ballad dates back to the Beatles’ Cavern Club days but provided an early indication of the unusual chord changes that would later figure into his writing, and that it’s safe to say no other Liverpudlians were coming up with. For McCartney, it was a simple subgenre song — “The letter is a popular theme, and it’s just my attempt at one of those” — but when it soon became part of their almost one-band British Invasion, no one marked it return to sender.

'Ballroom Dancing'

McCartney was the master of songs that harked back to a pre-rock era, like “Your Mother Should Know,” “Honey Pie” and “When I’m Sixty-Four.” This cut from 1982’s “Tug of War” album stands out among them because, beyond evoking a more innocent time, it actually rocks. “Ballroom dancing made a man of me!” he claims, giving a song about a youth spent learning to cha-cha-cha in Great Britain’s ballrooms sound like a nearly sexy macho rite of passage.

'A World Without Love'

McCartney thought this song was just “okay” and not good enough for the Beatles. He was wrong. A lot of songs he gave to other artists back in the ’60s like “Come and Get It,” a hit for Badfinger, are numbers the world finally got to hear his demo versions of, in the “Anthology” series or other boxed sets. But with “A World Without Love,” a chart-topper for the duo Peter and Gordon in early ’64 in both the U.S. and U.K., we’ve still never gotten any leak of more than 32 seconds’ worth of Paul demo-ing the tune. But that’s no reason not to include it on a list that represents his finest compositions as well as best recordings.

The release of this single in 1973 was when the rock intelligentsia really started going after McCartney as an alleged simp… and you can tell from the subsequent “Silly Love Songs” just how much heed he paid to that. “My Love” is easy listening at its lazy best, and should find a place on some best lists if it consisted of nothing more than Wings guitarist Henry McCullough’s brilliant solo, which, if you’re a McCartney fan, you can probably recall note-for-note as much as any lyric.

'Little Willow'

Just one more death song, although “Little Willow” doesn’t really present itself as such. Touched upon hearing of the death of Maureen Starkey, Ringo Starr’s ex-wife, in the mid-’90s, McCartney was moved to compose: “Instead of writing her kids a letter I wrote a song.” (Writing material for other Beatles’ or their wives’ kids had certainly proved fruitful before — see “Hey Jude.”) McCartney is obviously drawn to nature when it comes to writing about resilience: In writing “Bend, little willow / Wind’s gonna blow you / Hard and cold tonight,” he’s echoing the words of his earlier hit “With a Little Luck,” which promised, “The wiliow turns his back on inclement weather / And if he can do it, we can do it.”

'Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five'

There’s always a bit of cognitive dissonance hearing this song show up in stadium shows 37 years after the date in a title put out into the world 11 years before that. But the “Band on the Run” album-ender has such funky piano playing on McCartney’s part — it swings as much as anything he’d done rooted in the piano since “Lady Madonna” — that it’s worth the slight toll it takes on the modern brain.

'Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey'

How suite it was, once again, although this time McCartney sounded more like he was scoring a kids’ movie in coming up with one of his trademark medleys. There was a real Uncle Albert in McCartney’s British life, and a historically significant Admiral Halsey over in the U.S., though no one would exactly call this a docudrama, as silliness prevails in what the artist called “a playlet.” “Hands across the water / Heads across the sky” didn’t just refer to the two title characters being on different sides of the Atlantic; it referenced Paul and Linda’s own relationship being international, he said. It became his first post-Beatles No. 1 in America.

'Listen to What the Man Said'

To listen to this track is to be filled with regret — that Tom Scott didn’t get called in to add sax solos to way more Wings records in the ’70s. It was a first, take, too, after McCartney called him on the spur of the moment to try to set some fire to a tune that wasn’t quite igniting. He’s the man! Well, maybe not the man — it’s never clear who the title figure is that McCartney is referring to, but it’s more likely to be Christ or Buddha or Gandhi than a session player. It’s a buoyant, groovy, only slightly strange piece of pop that seems to have a touch of divinity to it, whether it’s in the love-affirming words or some real studio serendipity.

'Magical Mystery Tour'

Can a song this ubiquitous be underrated? It can. However uneven a curiosity the 1967 Beatles TV special of the same name turned out to be, it will always be worth it for the fanfare McCartney wrote for it, which sounds like such a spectacular portal into something that maybe even a terrific movie couldn’t have lived up to it.

'Arrow Through Me'

If there is one album that is a secret handshake that separates the true McCartney fans from the sightseer, it is probably 1979’s “Back to the Egg,” the last album to go out under the Wings aegis. Although commercially it was close to a non-starter, and even now it’s one of the few ’70s albums of his that hasn’t gotten its own deluxe boxed-set edition, devotees adore it because it felt like an attempt to do something that had the energy of the new-wave music of the time without actually bending to its tropes. The production hasn’t dated at all, and it might be McCartney’s most rock ‘n’ roll “solo” album. “Arrow Through Me” was a slight outlier amid all that power-pop — it’s loosely R&B based, with a very lightly funky groove and horn interjections. You can start here if you want to draw a picture of Macca as an un-self-conscious soul singer.

'Mother Nature's Son'

McCartney has always loved being outstanding in his field, as it were. He admits he was influenced on this White Album track by the most famous “nature” song of them all, Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy,” but primarily in the concept; musically, he was in California folkie mode. (Not that it’s ever that simple; he’s also cited the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams as partial inspiration for this number.) It was hardly the last of his pastoral songs — “Heart of the Country” was another terrific one, early in his solo career, and even recent “McCartney III” songs found him working in his barn — but this remains his finest outdoorsman anthem.

'With a Little Luck'

Of the two “With a little…” songs McCartney wrote or collaborated on — the other being “With a Little Help From My Friends” — is it wrong to show some favoritism toward this deceptively breezy 1978 Wings hit? In some ways it defines the increasingly synth-based era of late ’70s adult-contemporary… if you ignore McCartney’s vocal, which gets determinedly soulful, almost to the point of anguish, amid the pleasantries. It might even be one of his best vocal performances, if only for how his virtuosic curlicues and heartfelt rasp take a happy song and make it better.

Eat your hearts out, Patty and Mildred J. Hill. It may be “Happy Birthday to You” we’re singing at parties, but it’s the Beatles’ track we’re hearing in our heads, at some point, at least, during the festivities. It’s as close to an instrumental as the Beatles came; never was the riff more the essential thing than in this White Album entr’acte standout.

'Temporary Secretary'

The ultimate polarizer in the Macca catalog, other than maybe “Wonderful Christmastime.” If you find someone who thinks this 1980 combo of Kraftwerk/Devo synths and funny voices represents a peak in McCartney’s creativity and not a nadir, hold onto that person for dear life. The few, the proud, the “Temporary Secretary” adorers… we’re a special tribe.

Aren’t we glad it didn’t live up to its title? McCartney said he wrote this very minimalist song — which appeared on his first solo album after being tested out in Beatles rehearsals — both as a love song and a comment on consumer society throwing things away and replacing them unnecessarily. He was even influenced in writing it by the popularity of the junkyard-set TV series “Steptoe and Son” (precursor to the Americanized “Sanford and Son”). It’s really the chords that count with this one, anyway. That was clear when a wordless version, “Singalong Junk,” became arguably more popular than “Junk” ever had been after Cameron Crowe used the reprise variation to great effect in “Jerry Maguire.”

'Here Today'

Regrets? He’s had a couple, and one that definitely bore mentioning, in a 1982 song. McCartney has made this a critical mid-point part of his touring setlist for decades now, as a chance to tip a hat to John Lennon, its subject —  and to remind audiences that they should reach out to loved ones they are a little estranged from, lest they, too, find that the cutoff point for making full amends can come sooner than they imagine.

'That Day is Done'

This funeral song stands as McCartney’s other great song about a death — in this case, the deceased protagonist’s own. The idea for the tune and its verses came from co-writer Elvis Costello, who has talked about how flabbergasted he was when McCartney took what he’d written and sat down at the piano to belt out a spontaneous, glorious chorus that gave the song eternal life. Costello has done his own excellent versions of this since it was penned in the mid-’80s, with a more gospel/New Orleans feel… but not even he could sing it as movingly as McCartney.

'One After 909'

This rocker from the lads’ youth got revived for the Beatles’ “Get Back”/”Let It Be” project, at least partly as a result of the original conception that the documentary would chart the group making a back-to-roots album. Some fans considered this beneath the band at the time: After you’ve made “Sgt. Pepper,” you’re really going to go out with a Chuck Berry knockoff? But in Peter Jackson’s recent “Get Back” documentary miniseries, “One After 909” is the song that practically powers the whole movie into its ultimate momentum.

Yet another song of the singer offering comfort to a depressed or downtrodden friend… a running theme in his catalog, obviously. It starts as a gentle 6/8 ballad, but when the guitar power chords kick in as a very different chorus starts up, there’s some real muscle behind the trademark empathy. McCartney wished an R&B singer would have covered it, and beyond that, “I would have loved it as a single but I knew that no one on earth would ever have chosen it as a single,” he said. It was a cool Hot 100 entry in fans’ heads, at least.

'Letting Go'

“Letting Go” is one of the harder Wings songs to get a handle on. What does he need to let go of — the obsessive level of his attachment to Linda, as some writers have surmised, so that “like a lucifer,” she can “always shine”? Or let go of a resistance to falling even more madly and deeply? Beyond being a love song, it’s a little ambiguous, but there’s nothing that’s difficult to suss about the song’s easygoing rock groove, which has kept it as a slightly deeper cut in tour setlists all the way to 2022. This, as much as “Got to Get You Into My Life” or anything else, may be why McCartney finally started taking real horn sections out on the road — it just doesn’t make sense doing this one without the cathartic brass in the last stretch.

'Too Many People'

McCartney wrote this in response to Lennon “firing missiles at me with his songs… one or two of them (being) quite cruel. I don’t know what he hoped to gain, other than punching me in the face… I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled.” Well, not so veiled that most of the watching music world didn’t get the point and celebrate McCartney giving almost as good as he got in his answer song in the 1971 beef. “The first verse and the chorus have pretty much all the anger I could muster” )which is not all that much, in the overall scheme of things; the force of his new farm life was strong). McCartney revealed in “Lyrics” that he really sang “piece of cake” as “piss-off cake.” God bless this peace-loving songwriter for trying to be vitriolic, even if it sounded measured in the end.

'She's Leaving Home'

McCartney’s fascination with all the lonely people extended from the spinsters and ministers of “Eleanor Rigby” to teen runaways and clueless parents in “Sgt. Pepper’s” most somber moment. For someone also known for nonsense numbers like “Hi, Hi, Hi,” he sure has known how to draw a narrative as literally and precisely as any playwright. Combine that with a sentiment that seems to show some sympathy for the kids ditching suburbia to head to Haight-Ashbury or its likes, and voila — you have a very studious and formal anthem about kids letting their freak flag fly.

'Put It There'

You can thank McCartney’s dad for taking the standard handshake catchphrase “put it there” and adding the suffix that is key to this song’s 1989 chorus: “Put it there if it weighs a ton.” It took McCartney, of course, to extend that further still with a great closing line: “As long as you and I are here, put it there.” In the “Lyrics” book, he says, “I wonder whether I wanted to direct this song towards John — if it’s not, in its own way, a peace offering to a man who died way too young.” But, going back to the song’s origin, it also makes for a very sweet Father’s Day anthem.

'Getting Better'

OK, there’s one character line in the bridge that hasn’t worn so well in the 21st century, which is why we probably won’t see this in a setlist again. Barring that, though, this remains the most conventionally crowd-pleasing moment of “Sgt. Pepper.” The “couldn’t get much worse” call-and-response adds a funny barb that offers some grounding to McCartney’s sunny-side-of-the-street outlook.

'Getting Closer'

For “Back to the Egg” cultists, this remains one of his most fun post-Beatles singles. “One of the things about Wings was this freedom not to make sense,” McCartney said in talking about this late-period Wings rocker, which has him repeatedly addressing his beloved as “my salamander.” (Maybe lizard-phobia was responsible for this 1979 number not being the huge hit it deserved to be.) And: “I was probably smoking a little too much wacky baccy at the time.” That may have affected the lyrics, but this is one clear-headed rocker, when it comes down to the pure, unlazy drive of the song.

'Why Don't We Do It in the Road'

How primal could Paul “Two chords is enough” McCartney get? With this love-it-or-hate-it White Album deep cut, we found out. McCartney has always been a master of character voices, and the guy who’s singing about dotted-line sex here gets very baritone about it, until some imagination of concrete ecstasy sends him into a fleeting falsetto. Kids, don’t try this at home — either the vocal inflections or the mid-highway congress.

'The Long and Winding Road'

A more sober, CHP- and AAA-approved “road” song. McCartney was probably never as mad at John Lennon as he was enraged at Phil Spector for adding a massive orchestra and choir to the “Let It Be” album track, to the point that it’s probably this number alone that spawned the whole “Let It Be… Naked” spinoff of un-Spectorization. And yet the song is so good that it survives — even flourishes under — the ungodly amount of lily-gilding on the original single.

'Drive My Car'

“It was always good to get nonsense lyrics in, and this song lent itself to ‘Beep beep, beep beep, yeah.’ We did it in close harmony so it would sound like a horn, McCartney said. It won’t go down in his list of great melodic accomplishments: “Two chords are more than enough,” he said of “Drive My Car” — “maybe even one more than enough.” It’s not part of his current touring setlist, but the audience would surely miss all that toot-tooting along this time, if only they weren’t distracted by the other two hours and 40 minutes of hits.

In the same spirit as “Here Today” and other emotional carpe diem anthems comes this announcement that there has never been a better time to get your affairs with others in order. Unlike “Here Today,” it’s not too late — McCartney sounds positively jubilant that there’s still time to say and do the right thing. The rest of us should be, too.

'All My Loving'

It was John’s idea to do a guitar arrangement for this that would involve more furious strumming underneath a featherweight pop melody than the normal human arm and hand can withstand. But the promise to the children and especially young ladies of America and England in 1963-64 that he was never gonna give them up, never gonna let them go? That was all Paul. The song, like him, was a very, very cute one.

'Band on the Run'

Admit it: The middle section of this tri-part song is the most exciting, with its nervous “If we ever get out of here” energy and cranky guitar; the long, main concluding section after the introductory moments are just gravy. No? That’s just me? Never mind, then. “Band on the Run” is an eternal celebration of group bonding, which is ironic given how closely it came on the heels of the Beatles’ breakup. As his many attempts to find the perfect iteration of Wings proved, he hadn’t given up on the concept yet. And maybe, given how many decades his current “solo” touring band has been together, he never has.

'Figure of Eight'

One of McCartney’s most underrated solo tracks combines a great riff with a ragged-but-right vocal affirming the power of estranged parties to re-greet one another coming back around the track. If only he’d consider belatedly adding this back into his setlists.

'And I Love Her'

The Beatles love their cold openings, but McCartney has cold openings in his song titles, as the witty “and…” has us joining a love story already in progress. Before Jane Asher inspired some memorable breakup songs, she prompted this all-timer. McCartney freely admits that George Martin added the chord modulation that really turned the tune into a classic.

'Every Night'

Not expressly written for the pandemic, as the 1971 copyright date proves. But McCartney was into staying in for the evening instead of going out when staying in wasn’t cool.

'Another Day'

In speaking of this song, McCartney has described himself as a “voyeur.” Probably only in his imagination — even though he was known to take walks around London even as a superstar, we don’t imagine him getting to be much of a peeping tom, even for song research purposes. But writing about lives other than his own, however real or imagined, has served him extraordinarily well. He shows his usual penchant for empathy in writing about a single woman who may have a date for the evening but definitely has not landed a keeper. The way the melody bounces from good cheer to sheer pathos during the “so sad” section is the kind of turning-on-a-dime even the most accomplished songwriters have trouble pulling off.

'Got to Get You Into My Life'

McCartney’s ultimate dive into stacking — or Staxing — horns. The Beatles were supposed to be leading the charge into psychedelia, not soul, in ’66, but one R&B-loving Beatle in particular couldn’t help himself. Even Earth, Wind & Fire as supreme cover artists couldn’t outdo what the Fabs and George Martin came up with here.

It’s nonsense! Nearly. Which, in the world of Paul McCartney classics, is usually rendered as a compliment. Somewhere in there is the thwarting of young love, rendered a little bit (OK, a lot) more fantastically than it was a few years earlier in “The Back Seat of My Car.” The joyous feistiness of the arrangement grounds the lyrical fantasy and assures us the young heroes will leave the sergeant major in the dust.

'Can't Buy Me Love'

Can’t buy a thrill? Actually, for just under a buck in 1964, you could, in this concentrated form. “It’s 12-bar blues, with a Beatles twist on the chorus, where we bring in a couple of minor chords,” McCartney has said by way of explaining the song’s economics. But he’s forgetting something endemic to the Beatles: the greatness of a brilliantly delivered cold opening.

'Coming Up'

In a variation on accidentally putting what should have been the A-side on a B-side, McCartney put a wan, nearly annoying studio version of “Coming Up” as the leadoff track on “McCartney II,” then offered an exponentially superior live version as a bonus 7-inch 45 within the packaging. It was all right — everyone quickly found the right one, and all was well, and classic. As good as the horn arrangements on “Got to Get Your Life” were, he may have surpassed them with the manic horns-manship on the live track. It’s still one of his most assertively joyful feel-good tracks. You really can envision the flowering amid the funk.

'Hi, Hi, Hi'

The BBC thought McCartney was singing about his “body gun” and banned the song partly on that basis. If only they’d known he was really singing “polygon” — who doesn’t love a song about geometry? Or, all right, geometry as phallic metaphor and blatant talk of getting stoned? One reason this rocker was such a breath of fresh air was that it assured the world that, however much he was retreating into pastoral life and making woodsy albums like “Wild Life,” he could still get randy, and rocky.

'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'

Fanfare songs don’t come any better, even if McCartney pretty much dropped the narrative/conceptual idea after introducing “Billy Shears,” until the reprise came around. Dock this number only one or two points at most for inspiring the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton movie. There’s a reason Jimi Hendrix covered the song the week the Beatles’ version came out — the frilly uniforms and evocations of provincial British show business aside, it really does rock.

The original concept of the “Get Back” project inspired what was originally to be a title track (and of course did eventually provide a title for Peter Jackson’s doc, and a name for his 2022 tour). But leave it to McCartney to find a way to make a throwback rocker into a trans anthem, too, out of silliness if not an actual progressive agenda. Played on the rooftop for their last release and live show (if not actual album), there couldn’t have been a better end-to-an-end of an era.

'I Saw Her Standing There'

Whatever wedding reception ever managed to proceed without this standby — fire the DJ, retroactively.

'Lady Madonna'

Hero Fats Domino had nothing on Paul’s ability to deliver a piano-pounding tune, when he set his mind to it. Well, maybe a little. But just a little.

'Let It Be'

It’s easy to take “Let It Be” for granted — it feels like a song that’s always been there, like “Happy Birthday” or “Nearer My God to Thee.” So it’s startling to hear demo versions where McCartney sings about “brother Malcolm” instead of “Mother Mary” and realize that, no, this was actually a written thing, not the result of automatic writing. What is the thing, or the things, that we need to let be? Maybe the same stuff that was blowin’ in the wind earlier in the decade. It’s about accepting whatever you need to accept, ultimately — delivered with a melody that could make you accept just about anything: war, a bad boss, your own death. Apart from maybe “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” it’s the ultimate secular spiritual.

'Paperback Writer'

Having met writers like Harold Pinter as the Beatles’ circle expanded beyond fellow moptops, McCartney developed at least the fantasy of literary aspirations himself and imagined writing a letter selling himself to publishers. Clearly he had a sense of humor about possible limitations as a man of letters, and so the song became a witty, subtly self-effacing rocker, with great riffage and harmonies borrowed from the Beatles’ Beach Boys and Everly Brothers influences. It’s a melange that’s even greater than the sum of its odd parts.

'I'll Follow the Sun'

Many years before he wrote a song called “Hope of Deliverance,” McCartney came up with this song of post-split optimism that offered hope for the downhearted in self-affirming spades. “Some day you’ll know I was the one,” he sings, yet there’s not a trace of bitterness as the singer sweetly aims himself at the western horizon.

'My Brave Face'

Every one of the handful of songs that McCartney wrote with Elvis Costello in the mid-1980s is a keeper. In fact, the bonus disc of demos the two of them recorded together that was included in the “Flowers in the Dirt” boxed set a few years back is a great album in its own right. The first single to have emerged out of their hookup, “My Brave Face,” was an instant classic that betrayed traces of both their musical and lyrical styles. It’s probably McCartney’s wittiest breakup song — the antithesis in mood to “For No ONe,” certainly — with verses that take a cue from the country music tradition of bragging about how great you’re doing when you’re really hitting the skids. The melody and arrangement are pure power-pop, with McCartney dragging his Hofner bass out of mothballs for the first time since the Beatles, reportedly at Costello’s behest. As anyone who saw Macca’s recent U.S. tour can attest, that Hofner never got put in the closet again.

'Let Me Roll It'

There’s nothing especially salacious about these lyrics, yet there’s something about the guitar licks between lines in this Wings scorcher that’s so down and dirty, it almost makes the song feel filthy. We will always lay out the welcome mat for Paul’s heart, especially when he rolls it to us sounding this irresistibly laconic and raw.

How long can a 45 be? In 1968, fans got their first test of that. It was the epic singalong and fade that made the single iconic, but it’s the sweetness of Paul’s affectionate advice for Julian Lennon, the prompt for the song, that ultimately lingers after the nearly eight minutes are up.

'I've Just Seen a Face'

Another chorus that seemed to have come out of some folk tradition, not written anew. If he’d slowed it down just a few beats per minute, it might have become more of a campfire perennial. But the speed with which he approaches what could have been a more relaxed melody is part of what gives the song its rapid-fire charm.

'Penny Lane'

McCartney says that “there’s a documentary aspect to ‘Penny Lane,’ though it’s best viewed perhaps as a docudrama.” But it’s still strange to grasp that Penny Lane is a real place, no matter how many years or decades you’ve known that is is, when McCartney does such a fine job of making it feel like an imaginary fairy land, not just a roundabout that he used to pass through on the way to songwriting sessions at Lennon’s place. The specificity of detail weirdly makes it feel more fantastical, not less, even if it’s a working-class milieu and no strawberry field. With its tooting horns and key changes and resistance to anything that feels as new-fashioned as rock, “Penny Lane” rivals the Kinks’ “Village Green Preservation Society” as the thing that gave twee a good name.

'Eleanor Rigby'

McCartney loves to write in the third person, and he never got more narrative than the short-story collection that is “Eleanor Rigby.” The irony, of course, is these characters are just connected enough that they could be lonely together, instead of lonely apart… if they only had Paul, the overseer with the God’s-eye-view, playing matchmaker to them all. But no. Thankfully, McCartney didn’t write a lot of songs about people dying alone en masse… but if he were going to write just one, he did it right with what may be pop’s most universally beloved trip down bleak street.

'You Never Give Me Your Money'

And then the lawyers arrived. Never has there been a sadder or more heartfelt song written about what happens when boys end up in boardrooms, although this song has surely been the unsung soundtrack in a lot of divorce courts, too. When McCartney moved on to the bucolic solo pastures of his “McCartney” and “Ram” solo albums, it was hard not to cheer him and Linda finding peace, but he sure got a beautiful and lasting song out of the preceding discontent.

'We Can Work It Out'

“Try to see it my way,” McCartney pleads, in what could have almost been his theme song for the “Let It Be” sessions he tried to be a benign leader of a few years later. McCartney can certainly be a boss, but this peppy number always seemed like an anthem for those of us who like to feel like we’re reasonable in a conflict — even if, like Paul at Twickenham Studios, that can lead people to feel you’re still being a passive-aggressive alpha. He sure paints a beautiful picture of productive detente, at least.

'Live and Let Die'

Let it… not be? Give the other fella hell? The opportunity to write a Bond theme has a way of taking a guy to a less spiritually placid place. It’s easy to lose sight of how crafty this song is amid the nightly lasers and explosions and massive pyro on tour, but the song is almost hilariously ambitious, moving from very effective John Barry wanna-be passages to an out-of-nowhere reggae interlude and right back into a sweet paean to killing. But even vegans need some murderous role-play now and again.

'Two of Us'

Probably the most underrated of all the songs McCartney wrote in the second half or so of the Beatles’ tenure. Is its strong presence in Peter Jackson’s recent “Get Back” documentary finally curing that? It seems like it. It’s a modest song in so many ways, compared to McCartney’s other achievements during that era, but modesty becomes it. And so does the sense that this could be a song Paul wrote for either Linda or Lennon, during that sweet period of overlap. In the end, it seems more like a buddy song, if only for the spectacularly subtle way in which McCartney’s and Lennon’s voices somehow become one.

'Back in the U.S.S.R.'

Well, this one has probably been retired from McCartney’s sets for good, for obvious reasons — thanks, Vladimir. But it was fun while it lasts, when Russian provincialism could still be made into the stuff of post-Cold War comedy. Of course, it’s a pastiche of the early Beach Boys and Chuck Berry, with McCartney proving that it was not just “Pet Sounds” he listened to. It’s a masterpiece of comic writing even before he somehow marries Ray Charles’ geographical references with the Russian Georgia… maybe the funniest rock song ever written, actually, that’s such a strong rocker you almost forget about the parade of punchlines.

'I've Got a Feeling'

Lennon and McCartney never had a more blatant co-write, and John’s wet dreams, et al. made this their craftiest bifurcation since “A Day in the Life.” But whereas Lennon did the lion’s share of the work on that strange epic, McCartney did the heavier lifting here on a song that might’ve been a classic even without Lennon coming in to stick a landing. As his voice rises to a trademark near-scream as he sings “All that I’ve been looking for was somebody who looked like you,” the Beatles go higher than any mere rooftop could hold.

'For No One'

His breakup with Jane Asher provided a wellspring of thoughts he was able to channel into some darker songs, including this all-time corker about feeling emotionally rejected, regardless of who is destined to do the dumping. It’s a sort of twin to “Eleanor Rigby” on the “Revolver” album as a piece of dispirited chamber-pop, but while that other number reserves its loneliness for the third-person, McCartney’s use of the second-person “you” throughout these lyrics don’t disguise the fact that this one was personal. When he sings “Your day breaks,” you know the day isn’t the only thing that’s broken, however strangely formal and upright the song sounds.

McCartney’s Little Richard worship found an early culmination in this wild rocker, back in the era when the real gems were often found in the back seat of his car — that is, as B-sides on the Beatles’ 45s. How can we laugh when we know he’s down? We’re not laughing at you, Sir Paul… we’re chuckling with glee that any song ostensibly about depression could make us all want to squeal like schoolgirls in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

'Oh! Darling'

Listen to the early demos of this that were included in the boxed set of “Abbey Road” a couple of years ago, and you hear what could have been a nice bt very average song in McCartney’s semi-nostalgic vein. But after he tortured his voice to the point that it sounded absolutely ravaged, this was no longer destined to be heard as a throwback — it became one for the ages.

'I'm Looking Through You'

John was supposed to be the one who Does Cynicism, not Paul. But this deceptively chipper number from “Rubber Soul” permanently put the lie to the idea that Paul can’t write as barbed a kiss-off song as anyone. “Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight,” he sings, allowing for the possibility that these things just happen, but in writing about the end of his relationship with Jane Asher, it’s clear he was pointing a finger and not necessarily back at himself. He didn’t indulge in bitterness or recrimination often, but when he did, a little, we liked him when he was angry.

'Blackbird'

Chet Atkins meets the civil rights movement. At least, McCartney said he was inspired both by Atkins’ acoustic finger-picking style and the British slang for Black women when he wrote this song about the cultural emancipation of people of color that was happening in 1968. Only in later years did he make a point of contextualizing his original intent in concert every night. Even if you had no idea that race figured into it, as most fans probably didn’t for years after the White Album came out, it was still close to being the loveliest thing he ever wrote then or since, with a balm-like force for anyone who ever felt their wings were clipped, too.

'Here, There and Everywhere'

In the category of songs that have great introductions that never reappear again, this stands particularly tall. “We were trying to emulate the openings of some of our favorite old songs that had a completely rambling preamble,” he says in the recent lyrics book. Once that brilliant intro is dispensed with, though, McCartney is going for “circularity” — the song seems to spin around and within itself in some magical way that can’t be described, as if every element of the tune actually does exist here, there and everywhere. McCartney says that “if pushed,” he’d say this “is my own favorite of all my songs.” Lots of his contemporaries don’t need a push to agree with him there. Elvis Costello said the other day that “For No One” might be his old friend’s finest lyric… but when he picked a song to record and film an impromptu cover of for McCartney’s 80th birthday, naturally it was “Here, There and Everywhere,” the songwriters’ choice.

'Maybe I'm Amazed'

McCartney proved that a ballad could be a thrill ride, too. You can hear it a thousand times — many of us have, by a conservative estimate — and still be amazed by its twists and turns. They’re not all melodic, either. It’s typically taken as a song of romantic bliss, and fair enough, there. But McCartney himself said in the “McCartney: The Lyrics” book that came out last year that “it shows the fragility of love.” In what he calls an “intense, interior conversation that’s going on in the song… the elements of fear and loneliness are very much to the fore. ‘Maybe I’m afraid of the way I love you’ is itself a troubling idea.” But that’s easy to miss, amid the perfectly fitting vocal gymnastics that establish him here as much as anywhere as rock’s greatest singer. Never mind the shadings: This is one of pop’s great ecstatic experiences.

'Helter Skelter'

It would be an exaggeration to say we are hearing the invention of heavy metal here, but not by much. Ringo’s got blisters on his fingers at the end of it. We’ve got blisters on our soul, and still we want to go back to the top of the slide after that historic fake-out of a fade. With apologies to Bono, he never had to steal it back: This was always our thrill ride.

'Yesterday'

With a melody this indelible, McCartney’s most enduring and oft-covered ballad might have been a classic even if he’d stuck with the working title of “Scrambled Eggs.” (Thank God he did not stick with the working title of “Scrambled Eggs.”)

Living in the past is an illness that afflicts much of the world’s population. If they never had any anthem written for them other than this, it would be enough. The longing for a moment before mistakes were made or acts of God or personal cruelty occurred — it’s as if McCartney summed them up in one outrageously, deceptively simple song. So never let it be doubted that the man who sang “take a sad song and make it better” knew how to leave a tenderly melancholy moment alone. Is it ironic that Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky wrote music history’s most perfect downer? Probably not at all.

'Golden Slumbers'/'Carry That Weight'/'The End'

Is it unfair to count history’s most famous medley as a single item in pushing it to the top? Maybe no more unfair than it is for McCartney to end all his shows in recent years with the sequence of songs that serves as the lengthy climax of “Abbey Road.” Taken together, they make up rock ‘n’ roll’s most celebrated lullaby — and kind of a dark one, actually, until McCartney lightens it up at the end (and at “The End’), as he’s ultimately prone to. Is it only once upon a time there was a way to get back homeward? How heavy is that weight our boy is going to carry throughout his life? Throw in a reprise snippet of “You Never Give Me Your Money,” and the wistfulness threatens to take the Beatles’ final album down in bittersweet balladry. Until of course, McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison engage in a guitar showdown, Ringo Starr shows the world what a set of tom-toms are for, and the band’s (by then) fearless leader intones his famous benediction: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Is that aphorism, like, actually true? Yes, when you’re in the orbit of The Medley — it’s always a big part of Paul’s power, that he flirts with the melancholy and then makes us believe in happy endings.

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Magical Mystery Tour

By Scott Plagenhoef

September 9, 2009

After the death of manager Brian Epstein, the Beatles took a series of rather poor turns, the first of which was the Magical Mystery Tour film. Conceived as a low-key art project, the Beatles were oddly nonchalant about the challenges of putting together a movie. They'd assembled records, they'd worked on A Hard Day's Night and Help! -- how hard could it be? Without Epstein to advise, however, things like budgeting and time management became a challenge, and this understated experimental film turned into a sapping distraction.

Musically, however, the accompanying EP was an overwhelming success. The EP format apparently freed the band to experiment a bit, not having to fill sides of a 45 with pop songs or make the grand statements of an album. The title track is a rousing set piece, meant to introduce the travelogue concept of the film. The remaining four songs released exclusive to the EP are low-key marvels-- Paul McCartney's graceful "The Fool on the Hill" and music-hall throwback "Your Mother Should Know", George Harrison's droning "Blue Jay Way", and the percolating instrumental "Flying". Few of them are anyone's all-time favorite Beatles songs, only one had a prayer of being played on the radio, and yet this run seems to achieve a majesty in part because of that: It's a rare stretch of amazing Beatles music that can seem like a private obsession rather than a permanent part of our shared culture.

As a more laid-back release, the EP suggested the direction the band might have taken on the White Album had it remained a full band, happy to shed the outsized conceptualism and big statements and craft atmospheric, evocative pieces. In the U.S., the EP was paired with three recent double-sided singles, ballooning Magical Mystery Tour into an album-- the only instance in which a U.S. release, often mangled by Capitol, became Beatles canon. With only the EP's title track married specifically to the film's themes, the overall effect of a title track/album sleeve as shell game was in line with Sgt. Pepper ' s Lonely Hearts Club Band .

Of the three singles, the undisputed highlight is "Strawberry Fields Forever"/ "Penny Lane", John Lennon and Paul McCartney's tributes to their hometown, Liverpool. Slyly surreal, assisted by studio experimentation but not in debt to it, full of brass, harmonium, and strings, unmistakably English-- when critics call eccentric or baroque UK pop bands "Beatlesesque," this is the closest there is to a root for that adjective. There is no definitive Beatles sound, of course, but with a band that now functions as much as a common, multi-generational language as a group of musicians, it's no surprise that songs rooted in childhood-- the one experience most likely to seem shared and have common touchpoints-- are among their most universally beloved.

The rest of the singles collected here are no less familiar: Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" was initially completed up for an international TV special on BBC1-- its basic message was meant to translate to any language. Harrison's guitar solo, producer George Martin's strings, and the parade of intertextual musical references that start and close the piece elevate it above hippie hymn. Its flipside, "Baby You're a Rich Man", is less successful, a second-rate take on John Lennon's money-isn't-everything theme from the considerably stronger "And Your Bird Can Sing". It's the one lesser moment on an otherwise massively rewarding compilation.

Much better from Lennon is "I Am the Walrus", crafted for the Magical Mystery Tour film and EP but also released as a double-sided single with McCartney's "Hello Goodbye". One of Lennon's signature songs, "Walrus" channels the singer's longtime fascinations with Lewis Carroll, puns and turns of phrase, and non sequiturs. "Hello Goodbye" echoes the same contradictory logic found in the verses of "All You Need Is Love", a vague sense of disorientation that still does little to balance its relentlessly upbeat tone. McCartney excelled at selling simplistic lyrics that risk seeming cloying, though, and he again does here-- plus, the kaleidoscopic, carnival-ride melody and interplay between lead and backing vocals ensure it's a much better record than it is a song.

In almost every instance on those singles, the Beatles are either whimsical or borderline simplistic, releasing songs that don't seem sophisticated or heavy or monumental (even though most of them are). In that sense, they're all like "All You Need Is Love" or childhood memories or Lewis Carroll-- easy to love, fit for all ages, rich in multi-textual details, deceptively trippy (see Paul's "Penny Lane" in particular, with images of it raining despite blue skies, or the songs here that revel in contradictions-- "Hello Goodbye"'s title, the verses in "All You Need Is Love"). More than any other place in the band's catalogue, this is where the group seems to crack open a unique world, and for many young kids then and since this was their introduction to music as imagination, or adventure. The rest of the Magical Mystery Tour LP is the opposite of the middle four tracks on the EP-- songs so universal that, like "Yellow Submarine", they are practically implanted in your brain from birth. Seemingly innocent, completely soaked through with humor and fantasy, Magical Mystery Tour slots in my mind almost closer to the original Willy Wonka or The Wizard of Oz as it does other Beatles records or even other music-- timeless entertainment crafted with a childlike curiosity and appeal but filled with wit and wonder.

On the whole, Magical Mystery Tour is quietly one of the most rewarding listens in the Beatles' career. True, it doesn't represent some sort of forward momentum or clear new idea-- largely in part because it wasn't conceived as an album. The accompanying pieces on the EP are anomalies in the Beatles oeuvre but they aren't statements per se, or indications that the group is in any sort of transition. But if there was ever a moment in the Beatles' lifetime that listeners would have been happy to have the group just settle in and release songs as soon as possible, it was just before and after the then-interminable 10-month gap between the Revolver and *Sgt. Pepper'* s . Without that context, the results could seem slight-- a sort-of canonized version of Past Masters perhaps-- but whether it's an album, a collection of separate pieces, or whatnot matters little when the music itself is so incredible.

[ Note : Click here for an overview of the 2009 Beatles reissues, including discussion of the packaging and sound quality.]

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Magical Mystery Tour

Recorded just four days after the completion of the Sgt Pepper album, ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was Paul McCartney ’s attempt to maintain momentum within The Beatles and to give them a new direction and sense of purpose.

John and I remembered mystery tours, and we always thought this was a fascinating idea: getting on a bus and not knowing where you were going. Rather romantic and slightly surreal! All these old dears with the blue rinses going off to mysterious places. Generally there’s a crate of ale in the boot of the coach and you sing lots of songs. It’s a charabanc trip. So we took that idea and used it as a basis for a song and the film.

Inspired by Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and their LSD-fuelled bus, McCartney decided The Beatles should try something similar. He devised a rough concept for the new project, which would involve the group travelling around the England in their own coach, filming whatever took place.

I used to go to the fairgrounds as a kid, the waltzers and the dodgems, but what interested me was the freak shows: the boxing booths, the bearded lady and the sheep with five legs, which actually was a four-legged sheep with one leg sewn on its side. When I touched it, the fellow said, ‘Hey, leave that alone!’ these were the great things of your youth. So much of your writing comes from this period; your golden memories. If I’m stuck for an idea, I can always think of a great summer, think of a time when I went to the seaside. Okay, sand sun waves donkeys laughter. That’s a pretty good scenario for a song.

The resulting TV film was a mess, and critically panned, though the soundtrack double EP (expanded to a full album in the US) was a best-seller.

‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was co-written by John and I, very much in our fairground period. One of our great inspirations was always the barker. ‘Roll up! Roll up!’ The promise of something: the newspaper ad that says ‘guaranteed not to crack’, the ‘high class’ butcher, ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ from Sgt Pepper . ‘Come inside,’ ‘ Step inside, Love ‘; you’ll find that pervades a lot of my songs. If you look at all the Lennon-McCartney things, it’s a thing we do a lot.

The title track was McCartney’s initial idea, based on ideas written on an overnight flight from America on 11 April 1967 , though what he took to the studio was little more than the title and three chords. He attempted to rouse the other Beatles into contributing lyrics, but their enthusiasm was low and later completed the lyrics alone.

Because those were psychedelic times it had to become a magical mystery tour, a little bit more surreal than the real ones to give us a licence to do it. But it employs all the circus and fairground barkers, ‘Roll up! Roll up!’, which was also a reference to rolling up a joint. We were always sticking those little things in that we knew our friends would get; veiled references to drugs and to trips. ‘Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away ,’ so that’s a kind of drug, ‘it’s dying to take you away’ so that’s a Tibetan Book of the Dead reference. We put all these words in and if you were just an ordinary person, it’s a nice bus that’s waiting to take you away, but if you’re tripping, it’s dying, it’s the real tour, the real magical mystery tour. We stuck all that stuff in for our ‘in group’ of friends really. ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was the equivalent of a drug trip and we made the film based on that. ‘That’ll be good, a far-out mystery tour. Nobody quite knows where they’re going. We can take ’em anywhere we want, man!’ Which was the feeling of the period. ‘They can go in the sky. It can take off!’ In fact, in the early script, which was just a few fireside chats more than a script, the bus was going to actually take off and fly up to the magicians in the clouds, which was us all dressed in red magicians’ costumes, and we’d mess around in a little laboratory being silly for a while.

In the studio

The first ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ session took place on 25 April 1967 . The Beatles spent much time rehearsing and improvising the song, with Paul McCartney at the piano suggesting ideas to the others in the group.

Eventually they recorded three takes of the basic rhythm track: two guitars, piano and drums. Take three was the best. After this they raided the Abbey Road sound effects collection, creating a tape loop of the sound of coaches to be added at the mixing stage.

On 26 April McCartney recorded his bass part, and all The Beatles plus Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans played percussion instruments, including tambourine, maracas and cowbell. McCartney, John Lennon , and George Harrison also taped extra vocals.

The following day still more vocals were added. McCartney taped his lead, with backing from Lennon and Harrison.

An overdub of four trumpets was added on 3 May . The session began by McCartney humming notes to the brass players to let them know what he wanted, but he mostly failed to get his intentions across.

In the end the players were sent away while McCartney and George Martin worked out the notation on the piano in Abbey Road’s studio three. One of the trumpeters, Gary Howarth, reportedly became so impatient that he wrote a score himself. According to Philip Jones, a friend of the session musicians, that was the idea The Beatles ended up using.

The recording of ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was completed on 7 November . During the editing of the film, Lennon had added a spoken introduction: “Roll up, roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour! Step right this way! Hurry, hurry, hurry!” It was decided that this should be added to the record release too.

McCartney recreated Lennon’s spiel, although he left out the “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” section. A tape loop of traffic noise, assembled back on 25 April, was also added. The song was then mixed in stereo and mono.

Latest Comments

Hi all! Does anyone know what mix of this song was used in the ‘Anthology’? I have the original vinyl (Canadian) and the remasters, and the mix in ‘Anthology’ definitely has different panning; in my two versions the electric guitar is on the left with the drums, percussion, etc. In the ‘Anthology’ clip (chapter 7, 23:20-24:06,) the drums appear in both speakers, the percussion and piano remain on the left and the electric guitar is hard-panned to the right with the trumpets. By giving greater exposure to the electric guitar, piano and percussion in this way (the guitar and piano notes being in roughly the same range,) the mix “moves” more than the other one, creating more of a rock song. Does anyone A) notice this difference and B) know where to find this mix in its entirety? Thanks…

i’ve just checked my Anthology and it’s not on there as i thought, but the version of this song in the film is different to the released version, maybe it’s this mix you refer to? as it has been widely bootlegged.

i think the Anthology was the movie version. I myself have 3 versions of the song.

‘Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away,’ so that’s a kind of drug, ‘it’s dying to take you away’ so that’s a Tibetan Book of the Dead reference.’

I love Paul as a musician, but quotes like this are just stupid.

no its not. its really true. with a comment like that we can see , you know nothing about the beatles…

It’s not so stupid… ingesting LSD and other psychedelics produces a state of consciousness paralel to the one the brain experiences when it is dying. Hence the tibetan book of the dead reference.

No you are stupid not him. You clearly know nothing about the drug and the book yet u made a silly clueless comment.

Thank you dude Someone had to say it

Yeh I agree, I feel the fact John is constantly held up as the lyrical genius gets to him, and he feels the need to prove himself (including with his new book!). Such a talented musician, he doesn’t need to prove himself to anyone.

Yeah, I feel that way too. It’s the same as with “Got To Get You Into My Life”, which I don’t really believe was a love-letter to pot, despite Paul’s claims. Paul, to me, seems to feel the need to prove his edginess and counteract any suggestion that he’s a lightweight – like it’s not enough to be a brilliant musician and songwriter

Agreed, 100%. A real shame Paul made these retrospective comments…or felt he needed to. Lyrically, the songs don’t even fit the story he put out. ‘Got to get you into my life’ is the classic example…it’s a great uptempo love song and that’s it.

I disagree completely… just read the lyrics of the first verse! Even John posited that Got To Get You Into My Life was about LSD, so if anything Paul is retreating and making himself less edgy by saying it was pot. I think it’s telling when people conclude deceitful motives when none are apparent… sometimes you see what you want to see.

You are correct. It’s about acid, but Paul has downplayed that to say it’s an ode to weed, which is fine. Whoever said it’s just a love song is clueless.

I Think Paul knows what He wrote his songs about than us. Even Lennon said Got To Get You Into My Life was a drug song.

The rest of the song is good, but oh God just that coda in the end is sooo magical… incredible really. 😮

That’s always been my favorite part of the song, the haunting piano coda!

Who wrote/played that coda? It has a very emotional effect on me

Paul played the piano at the end there, I believe

Isn’t it, though? Amazing little thing. Beautiful

It really is, sounds like something that The Doors might do :] But what’s most impressive to me is drumming and this part, kind of 8 when Paul sings: “You got everything you need…”. It’s really good.

That piano coda sure sounds like Mike Garson. Listen to the piano solo in Aladdin Sane.

Paul gave John significant credit for helping to write this “Paul” song – one of the few examples where he does that.

Love Me Do, Paperback Writer, What You’re Doing, Here There And Everywhere, Good Day Sunshine, Penny Lane — even When I’m 64 could also be mentioned, but you’re right; there aren’t *that* many…songs that Paul seems to give John more credit than John himself seemed to feel he deserved.

John, it has to be said, did take *a lot* of credit. Was he right to? Possibly, but slightly more would be pushing it a bit, and I guess the same goes for Paul.

I am one of the rare people who actually likes this song better than SGT. Pepper. You gotta love the raw, heavy guitar on Pepper but there is just something about MMT, especially on the remasters. Also, its obvious that the beatles (other than Paul, and maybe Ringo) quit on there potential on some of their later songs. Too bad because MMT could have really been a masterpiece. I love Johns chorus at the end. His voice tone really cuts into me and I absolutely love the second part where he says “…dying to take you away…” Just think how much better this song could have been if he and George werent so distracted by this point.

Is that really John singing the last two “The Magical Mystery Tour is … “? I always thought so.

I agree, Nolan. Just think about how much better the entire MMT ALBUM would have been if John and George had been at least a LITTLE more enthusiastic. I imagine these recording sessions being dominated by Paul (partly out of necessity), while John and George yawned and constantly glanced at their watches. If they had been more “into it,” the whole album would have ended up more, uh… “magical.” Of course, Paul probably DID come off like an overbearing alpha dog, so the distaction of the rest of the group is not surprising.

Frankly the only “magic” in the soundtrack portion of MMT for me is John’s “I Am The Walrus” and George’s “Blue Jay Way”. I am grateful for the contributions of the “distracted” ones. As for the 1967 singles portion of MMT, John’s contributions of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “All You Need Is Love” (plus his half of “Baby, You’re A Rich Man”) are outstanding to say the least.

I agree with you, Joseph Brush. I think “Strawberry Fields Forever” and especially “All You Need Is Love” are the great songs. But I don’t like Blue Jay Way.

well Fool on the Hill and Your Mother Should Know, not to mention the previously-released Hello Goodbye, are all very typical Paul songs with great sing-along qualities and each has a bit of weirdness to keep it in line with the whole concept of the film/album. Add the singles and it’s really a great, great album. I don’t know if it’s fair to single out the John and George compositions and simply write off Paul’s efforts on this one.

I have to say that “Walrus” and “Strawberry Field” are phenomenal compositions by John and George Martin with the rest of the band doing their thing to back them up flawlessly. I just give Paul the slight overall edge in his contributions. He represents the frontman for me…Looking at all the beatles post work including Paul’s, it doesn’t even matter. Without all 4 of them together with the chemistry they had in relationship to one another, inspiring and demanding eachothers A+ game no matter what was going on, we wouldn’t even be having ongoing conversations like this 40 years later. Granted there are exceptions and if I ever get bored enough with their compact and complete catalogue, I would get a kick in naming the top 50 or 100 worst beatles songs. Paul would dominate that list as well but he also takes the cake in many of my all time favorite beatles songs. That’s why I love Paul’s work the most. He could afford produce some real clunkers because he could always make up for it ten times over with masterpiece after masterpiece. Hearing the remastered mono recording of MMT is really like experiencing this song for the first time for me. Comparing it to the 87’s is simply put an absolute disaster vs and absolute work of art. I always liked this song as a young boy. But I never loved it like the seemingly hundreds of other fantastic Beatles songs I got to experience over and over growing up.

“I am the Walrus” is certainly a fantastic song, but the most magical moment on MMT is the title song’s coda melting into “Fool on the Hill.”

I always liked the Walrus , Strawberry Fields and A Day in the Life. Lennon’s backing vocals make certain songs sound quite awesome. See how they run? It couldn’t get no worse? She’s leaving home ,bye,bye. I too felt the impact The Beatles made in the 60’s. They definitely had a different sound than their contemporaries. Obviously they were better together than apart. MMT was an interesting album. Capital records made a good decision by putting 1967’s singles on one side. Baby You’re a Rich Man is underrated. I agree with you regarding the mono mixes.

Dying is the ultimate Magical Mystery experience.

Love this song. It is just so fast paced and catchy.Basically a McCartney song. I also love the EP , film and album of the same name.

And the bassline, all the way through. One of Macca’s absolute best performances

Great title track for film, E.P. and album. Very 1967, would have been a hit if released as a single.

favorite song of all time, especially love John’s slow verse

Needless to say, I did ‘roll-up’ for the Magical Mystery Tour.

Which Beatle is the one giving the “Roll up” introduction at the beginning of the song? Does anyone out there know?

It was John in the film, but Paul on the record. Paul’s version was recorded on 7 November 1967 .

On the Cheap Trick cover of this song, on the bridge section I can clearly hear two voices overlapping, one is saying “Mystery Tour”, the other “Taking aTrip”. It’s harder to disentangle on the Beatles’ version, but is that what is happening? It actually sounds like Mystery Trip, but I think Cheap Trick have done us all a favour ?

Wow! I clearly hear “taking a trip” at slightly less volume than “mystery tour”. For years I’ve wondered what that garbled sounding second vocal was singing and now I know. Thanks!

It always sounded like ” a mystery trip” to me. (shrug).

There is no lead guitar in this song. Just two rhythm guitar parts.

Hello everyone! Can anyone explain why Magical Mystery Tour (song) is not treated as a Beatles hit, since the double EP with this recording as the title track entered the singles chart and shot to number 2. After all, this is an achievement equal to the success of the singles Please Please Me, SFF/PL or Let It Be. Moreover, like the single Please Please Me, in top music weekly newspaper Melody Maker, it reached number 1 for one week (January 13, 1968).

Even though the Magical Mystery Tour EP got to number 2 in the UK singles chart it is considered an EP and not a 45 stand alone single and therefore it does not qualify as a hit single.

Thanks for your reply, I know all of what you wrote, but my question still doesn’t have a clear, convincing answer. It is obvious that MMT was a double EP from a formal or technical point of view, but in terms of musical competition, i.e. classification on the charts, it was undoubtedly treated as a single. Thus, the title track should be considered another huge hit by The Beatles.

I understand what you say and ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ is a very well known song but as I said previously it was not a single. It was a Double EP. EP’s would often climb into the singles chart as all the early Beatles EPs did. ‘Long Tall Sally’ EP from 1964 is another example. It got to No.1 in the singles charts but is not considered a huge hit in the UK. The ‘All My Loving’ EP from 1964 also reached No.1 but ‘All My Loving’ is not considered a single. The fact that they wrote ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ makes no difference. All EPs were considered as singles in as much as they got into the singles chart in the UK and they all had single chart placings. ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ gets plenty of airplay on radio. I don’t think it gets treated any differently apart from the fact that it was not a single so is therefore not included on Beatles single compilations. See Here for more info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_play?wprov=sfti1

Sheldon, thank you kindly. The matter is clear to me now.

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Magical Mystery Tour (soundtrack album) by The Beatles

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Magical Mystery Tour is ranked 6th best out of 68 albums by The Beatles on BestEverAlbums.com.

The best album by The Beatles is Abbey Road which is ranked number 3 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 65,258.

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Rating metrics: Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation). (*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings) This album is rated in the top 1% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 85.5/100, a mean average of 84.6/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 85.6/100. The standard deviation for this album is 13.4.

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How many albums have at least 3 of the greatest songs of all time (Strawberry Fields Forever, I Am the Walrus, Penny Lane)? I think it is underated, because you could say it is not an album. It is a double EP combined with 5 non-album singles.

In my opinion the best Beatles album. Contains a killer mix of psychedelia (Blue Jay Way) and perfect pop songs (Penny Lane, Hello Goodbye). A good point also for the booklet.

I undervalued this for years. But I'm lying if I say this isn't one of The Beatles' absolute finest. It's so good that it's the one U.S. release that is accepted as canon for Christ's sake! The first half is a vibey soundtrack that hones the band's sonic ambitious into moody gems, while the second half compiles some killer highlights. And even if the back half singles aren't the absolute S-tier best, they're still fantastic. What's not to like?

It's not my favourite Beatles-album, but it's still really good. Side-B is probably one of the best made by any band, if not the best.

Amazing set of songs! The diversity of the songwriting, the studio experimentation, the arrangements and the instrumentation is second to no other album I've ever heard. This would be my desert island disc if I could only choose the one.

I get Sgt. Pepper's importance and historical relevance, but I've always thought that Magical Mystery Tour is a far superior album.

Probably the most underrated Beatles album. The sheer amount of quantity and quality makes me wonder why this is the case.

Extremely underrated and overlooked album. Best Songs: Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, I Am The Walrus, The Fool on the Hill, and All You Need Is Love.

Album Rating: 79.60 (796/10) 1.Magical Mystery Tour. 78 2.The Fool On The Hill. 80 3.Flying. 68 4.Blue Jay Way. 70 5.Your Mother Should Know. 85 6.I Am The Walrus. 94 7.Hello Goodbye. 82 8.Strawberry Fields Forever. 77 9.Penny Lane. 76 10.Baby You're A Rich Man. 70 11.All You Need Is Love. 86

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Magical mystery tour.

Release date: 27 November 1967

(Spoken lyric) Roll up, roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour. Step right this way!

Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour. Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour.

Roll up, and that's an invitation, Roll up for the mystery tour. Roll up, to make a reservation, Roll up for the mystery tour.

The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away, Waiting to take you away.

Roll up, we've got ev'rything you need Roll up for the mystery tour. Roll up, satisfaction guaranteed, Roll up for the mystery tour.

The Magical Mystery Tour is hoping to take you away, Hoping to take you away.

The mystery trip.

The Magical Mystery Tour. Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour.

The Magical Mystery Tour is coming to take you away, Coming to take you away.

The Magical Mystery Tour is dying to take you away, dying to take you away, take you today.

"Magical Mystery Tour" is a song by the Beatles, the opening track and theme song for the album, double EP and TV film of the same name. Unlike the theme songs for their other film projects, it was not released as a single.

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A True Magical Mystery Tour

LIVERPOOL— I am midway through a 10-day tour of England and Scotland with a group of 26 Americans. All have travelled with me before. For a few of them it’s their seventh trip as my guests. They are a stellar crew and I have become friends with all of them before this current journey started.

Our bond grew stronger on our visit to Liverpool.

I am writing this on the jump seat of a bus somewhere in the pastoral English countryside between The Cotswolds and Liverpool. The 26 Americans sitting behind me have entrusted 10 days of their lives in my hands. This tour started in London several days ago and will end in Edinburgh, Scotland several days from now.

I have hosted approximately 47 of these tours with somewhere over 1,100 guests— most over the past six years— with two years off during Covid. All have been great adventures with wonderful people. None have been like this group and this trip.

My travel company— RSJ Yonderlust Tours— formed organically several years ago and now keeps me busy for six weeks in the fall and six weeks in the spring. Even though we are travelling with a couple of dozen people, these trips have never felt like group travel. I always feel as if I have made friends at the end of every trip. This group and I became friends a long time ago and we have shared some amazing experiences throughout Europe.

The very first tour I co-hosted started in London before heading south under the Channel into Belgium, Normandy, and Paris. This time I’m headed north. More importantly I am headed through a sort of personal mecca for me— Liverpool. There are many items on my bucket list, one that is near the top is to visit Liverpool and trace the steps of the greatest band that ever existed, one that fostered my love of music, and one that has kept me passionate about music for over six decades, The Beatles.

My grandmother traveled the world mostly as a member of groups and clubs to which she belonged. My grandfather wasn’t interested in traveling abroad. He took the train to Chicago once a year to see the White Sox play, but worked seven days a week, otherwise, and was content to send her all over the world. As a kid I remember hearing stories of her European travels at the dinner table. I don’t remember ever dreaming of taking a Grand Tour, but I can remember, as a 10-year-old thinking of how great it would be to visit Liverpool one day.

To be honest, for most of my life I never thought that day would come.

We had an early departure from Lower Slaughters in the Cotswolds and the inn opened the dining room 30 minutes early for our group. My love for these guests grew even deeper when I walked into the dining room and all the ladies— and some of the men—were dressed in 1960s Beatles-era costumes! They know my love of The Beatles. I was moved, deeply.

Though I worried that a one-day stop in Liverpool was a too self-indulgent and selfish as it was a bucket list item for me, and probably not many of my guests. I design these tours to cover what is best for my guests. I had never taken such personal preferences before. To my delight, they were all elated.

I write this on a bus just north of Liverpool as we head to the Scottish Highlands. Yesterday will go down as one of the more memorable days of my life. It was an all-Beatles tour, all day long. We visited all the historic spots known for the band: The Casbah Club where they played their very first gigs as teenagers, Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, their childhood homes, dined in the Cavern Pub and went into the Cavern Club where the honed their skills after a long stretch of marathon nights in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles played The Cavern 291 times between February 9, 1961 (seven months before I was born) and August 3, 1963. After that, Beatlemania happened and their lives— and the music world— were never the same.

It was an emotional day for me, and my emotions overcame me several times, mainly when I thought of the friends who I wished were with me enjoying all we were experiencing.

My emotions overcame me for the final time at the end of the day, standing in the middle of The Cavern Club listening to a cover band play, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” (the first record I owned).

I thought back to my childhood bedroom on 22nd Avenue in my hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi when I first heard that song on my toy record player. I thought of my grandmother and was grateful she instilled a love of travel in me at an early age. I thought of my friends who also love The Beatles but weren’t there. I felt gratitude for the friends who were with me in that moment, and then the song was over. And the day was over.

The Beatles loaded up on a bus and toured the English countryside for the movie “Magical Mystery Tour.” It struck me that we are doing the same thing. I am honored that people trust me to travel with them. I am appreciative for the leadership team back home who hold down the fort at New South Restaurant Group. I am thankful for the team that works with me to put these trips together. I am especially grateful for my friend Jesse Marinus who helped me organize this trip and made it possible to have one of the most memorable days of my life.

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