Songwriters often subconsciously reveal things that even they don’t realize. In some cases, it takes an outside source to put a finger on it, maybe somebody within your own band who knows you better than anybody else.
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In the case of “Good Morning Good Morning,” John Lennon, the song’s chief writer for The Beatles, didn’t explain that it might have come from his own deep-seated frustrations with his daily life. But after the fact, his songwriting partner Paul McCartney made the connection.
“Morning” Has Broken
If you judge whether something is a concept album or not by interconnected songs or a running narrative, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band doesn’t really make the grade. The masterful 1967 album only really holds up in that regard for the first two and last two songs, when Sgt. Pepper’s band addresses the audience.
But the songs do share thematic connections. Many of them deal with the routine ephemera of everyday life, at least in lyrical terms. The music, so wondrous and inspired, then takes those slice-of-life stories and renders them all indelibly magical.
“Good Morning Good Morning” was inspired by the slogan in a cereal commercial. In interviews after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon dismissed his song as inessential. But Paul McCartney, as he explained to biographer Barry Miles, heard in its lyrics Lennon’s dissatisfaction with the tedium of his first marriage:
“John was feeling trapped in suburbia and was going through some problems with Cynthia. It was about his boring life at the time—there’s a reference in the lyrics to ‘nothing to do’ and ‘meet the wife’; there was an afternoon TV soap called Meet the Wife that John watched, he was that bored, but I think he was also starting to get alarm bells.”
Examining the Lyrics to “Good Morning Good Morning”
A close inspection of the lyrics of “Good Morning Good Morning” does indeed confirm some of McCartney’s suspicions. The music, horn-filled, hard-charging, and irreverent (check out the barking, bleating, and roaring menagerie that shows up at the end of the song), hides a lot of that.
The song starts with a dose of Lennon’s gallows humor: Nothing to do to save his life / Call his wife in. He’s likely referencing a symbolic death, as in the death of excitement or spontaneity. It’s telling that the word nothing keeps popping up, as it seems to represent Lennon’s overall assessment of the sum of suburban life.
When he breaks into a strutting section of the melody, Lennon paints a bleak picture of his surroundings: Everybody knows there’s nothing doing / Everything is closed, it’s like a ruin / Everyone you see is half asleep. Not even nostalgia can snap him out of his doldrums: Then you decide to take a walk by the old school / Nothing has changed, it’s still the same.
In the final portion of the song, Lennon starts to find some bright spots in the outlook. The end of business day brings about a flurry of activity and a surge of positivity. Our narrator is even OK with small talk: Somebody needs to know the time, glad that I’m here. A little romance even sneaks into the picture: Go to a show you hope she goes.
Even though Lennon keeps insisting, I’ve got nothing to say, he ends up delivering a quite detailed portrait of his tableau. “Good Morning Good Morning” might not exactly be a ringing endorsement of the daily grind, but it certainly is an honest one.
Photo by Sunday People/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
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