The Beatles have 20 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. That is more than enough. However, The Beatles had a surplus of album tracks that seemingly also could have peaked at No. 1 if they had been released as singles. Some of those tracks include “Here Comes The Sun”, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Blackbird”, and arguably their most tragic song, “A Day In The Life”.
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The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” resides on their infamously career-defining album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. To many fans, the track is the best song on the album. Although it never had the opportunity to reach No. 1, given that The Beatles did not release it as a single. Though the track certainly had the legs to not only peak the chart, but also dominate it.
The public reception for The Beatles’ tracks was astounding. Thus, if they had released the song as a single, it likely would have garnered more success. However, as the rumor goes, The Beatles refused to release tracks on their albums as singles as they felt it would discourage their fans from buying the whole album. The Beatles made an exception to this rule with “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”. In addition to this theory, there was seemingly another element that dissuaded them from entertaining the idea, and that was the BBC ban of “A Day In The Life”.
The Interpretive Issue With “A Day In The Life”
The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” is about Irish socialite, aristocrat, and heir to the Guinness fortune, Tara Brown. However, analyzing the demise of a wealthy citizen was not why the BBC banned the single. Rather, they banned the single for an interpretive issue in one of the song’s many lines.
The line the BBC took issue with: I’d love to turn you on. Regarding the song, BBC‘s Director of Sound Broadcasting, Frank Gillard, wrote, “The recording may have been made in innocence and good faith, but we must take account of the interpretation that many young people would inevitably put upon it.”
To Gillard, the drug-fueled interpretation of the line would seemingly motivate the youth of England to participate in drug use. He wrote in his letter that the phrase was “currently much in vogue in the jargon of the drug addicts.”
Banned in 1967 upon its release, the BBC finally lifted the ban five years later in 1972. This might seem like a major issue, but for The Beatles, it was seemingly a minor inconvenience. “A Day In The Life” is still one of their greatest songs of all time, even if it was banned and even if it didn’t have the chance to become a No. 1 hit.
Photo by Roy Cummings/THA/Shutterstock
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