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The Beatles song Annie Lennox feels “privileged to have been privy to”

Sat 5 October 2024 8:00, UK

Throughout much of the latter half of their discography, The Beatles were no strangers to experimentation. After roughly six albums (depending on who you ask), they ditched much of the rock and roll that had defined their early success and began searching for ways to expand the pre-conceived limits of what pop music could sound like.

Arguably beginning with 1966’s Revolver, the band began to employ a vast range of psychedelic sounds in their music, and this was no more apparent than on both of their full-length releases from the following year. While Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is often the record that takes the plaudits as not only one of the Beatles’ best but also one of the best albums of all time, its successor in Magical Mystery Tour holds a plethora of even stranger moments.

Among the six tracks on the initial double-EP soundtrack to the TV film of the same name is ‘I Am The Walrus’; a madcap composition that highlighted not only the band’s newfound proclivity for psychedelia but also lays a marker for John Lennon’s descent into writing more abstract and Dadaist lyrics. Its visceral imagery in lines like “yellow-matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye” and more aggressive sonic palette came as a shock to many, but it also managed to earn a significant amount of acclaim.

One notable fan of the track is former Eurythmics singer and songwriter Annie Lennox, who, in a 2008 interview with ABC Nightline, included ‘I Am The Walrus’ in her selection for her ‘Favorite Songs Playlist’. Lennox – who would only have been 12 years old at the time of its original release – was profoundly affected by the song and went on to share the reason for her admiration of it.

“One of those incredible songs that stands out for me is ‘I Am The Walrus’,” she explains. “Now, when I look back on that, it was kind of an incredible privilege to think that explosion happened, and I was privy to it – I was affected by it.”

The Scottish singer then went on to reference how drastically different it sounds when compared to the Beatles’ earlier material, discussing many of the external influences that shaped the composition. “Past that kind of mop-top shaking time, they went into this other psychedelic realm, and of course, they went to India and met the Maharishi, and they’d been influenced and smoked a lot of pot.”

While ‘I Am The Walrus’ may have made her selection alongside tracks from Joni Mitchell, Glen Campbell and Aretha Franklin, Lennox has also expressed admiration for another track from Magical Mystery Tour. In 2014, she paid tribute to the Liverpudlian icons by reuniting with her former Eurythmics bandmate Dave Stewart for the one-off concert, The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles, where the duo performed a rendition of ‘The Fool on the Hill’.

Undeniably, ‘I Am The Walrus’ is one of the Beatles’ crowning achievements in a much-celebrated catalogue, owing largely to its expansive view of what pop music could truly be. Whether it owes its success to the reasons Annie Lennox proclaims, to its capturing of the zeitgeist of the time period, or simply to the wonderful orchestral arrangements and production choices of George Martin, it has always been a song that has inspired listeners and will continue to do so.

As Lennox concluded in her interview, “You have to listen to ‘I Am The Walrus’ by The Beatles. I did, and look what happened to me!”