Some of the scariest Beatles songs don’t necessarily have terrifying themes, but the way the music sounds can send a chill up your spine. Here are the scariest Beatles songs.
5. ‘Helter Skelter’
Before Charles Manson and his cult “hijacked” it, “Helter Skelter” was designed to be jarring. After hearing The Who’s Pete Townshend say he’d written the “loudest, dirtiest, rockiest” song, “I Can See for Miles,” Paul McCartney wanted to do the same. So, he went into the recording studio and told the band, “Let’s just see how loud we can get and how raucous. Let’s try to make the meters peak.”
However, the song had innocent beginnings. In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that a helter skelter is a conical fairground fixture with a slide around the outside. He also took inspiration from a song in Alice in Wonderland. The lyrics describe the excitement one feels going up and down a slide.
Many consider it one of the scariest Beatles songs simply because they’d never done anything like it. It was a stark contrast to songs like “Let It Be.”
4. ‘A Day in the Life’
John Lennon’s beginning verses in “A Day in the Life” paint a dark picture. He sings, “And though the news was rather sad/ Well, I just had to laugh/ I saw the photograph/ He blew his mind out in a car/ He didn’t notice that the lights had/ changed/ A crowd of people stood and stared.”
Then, the orchestra reaches a crescendo, and it’s all very jarring and uneasy as The Beatles transport us into another man’s life. In the end, after that bone-rattling piano key is pressed, a dog whistle sounds, and an eerie backward tape repeats. It sends chills up the spin and is one of the scariest noises ever made in a rock ‘n’ roll song.
3. ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’
The riff of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is dreadful, gloomy, and dark. Not to mention white noise from the Moog synthesizer and Billy Preston’s Hammond organ playing gives it a spooky feel. It’s as if we stumbled into a dark, dank, lair. The most terrifying part of the song isn’t the repeating of “She’s so heavy” at the end. It’s the gut-wrenching scream from John at 4:28.
2. ‘In Spite of All the Danger’
Paul McCartney wrote “In Spite of All the Danger” and The Quarry Men recorded it around 1958. It’s not meant to be eerie or jarring like the other songs on this list, but there is something spooky about it. Maybe because it’s the first Beatles recording and not done well. Paul’s “Ahhhh ahhhh ahhhh” is a bit unsettling in the way that certain old 1940s songs are.
1. ‘Blue Jay Way’
There’s not scary about the lyrics of “Blue Jay Way.” George Harrison wrote it while waiting for The Beatles’ press agent Derek Taylor and his wife to arrive at a house he rented in Los Angeles. George grew bored and started playing an electric organ. Then, it got foggy, and the mood changed. The atmosphere around George came out in the song. It’s one of the most unsettling Beatles songs. The moodiness of it and the way George sings the lyrics are chilling. The backward singing that comes in between each lyric is unnerving.
Some runners-up for this list include “Love You To” because of jarring lyrics like “Love me while you can/ Before I’m a dead old man.” It’s like an eerie warning. There’s also “She Said She Said” because of lyrics like, “She said ‘I know what it’s like to be dead/ I know what it is to be sad/ And it’s making me feel like I’ve never been born.'” Another eerie Beatles song is “Happiness is a Warm Gun” simply because of its gun references. It’s hard to listen to, considering Mark David Chapman shot and killed John in 1980.
Some of the scariest Beatles songs stand out because they are rare. For the most part, The Beatles stuck to either love songs, inspiring songs, or tunes that told an interesting story. However, like everyone else, they knew about darkness.
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