Yellow Submarine

Today's song is one of The Beatles' most famous songs, "Yellow Submarine". While it was written by John and Paul, Ringo sang it, lending his distinctive voice to this unique song. The different sound effects were created through various means:

Lennon blew through a straw into a pan of water to create a bubbling effect, McCartney and Lennon talked through tin cans to create the sound of the captain's orders, at 1:38-40 in the song, Ringo stepped outside the doors of the recording room and yelled like a sailor acknowledging "Cut the cable! Drop the cable!", which was looped into the song afterwards, and Abbey Road employees John Skinner and Terry Condon twirled chains in a tin bath to create water sounds.

Paul McCartney remembers writing the lyrics:

I was thinking of it as a song for Ringo, which it eventually turned out to be, so I wrote it as not too rangey in the vocal, then started making a story, sort of an ancient mariner, telling the young kids where he'd lived. 

He also said, of the song's "land of submarines":

It's a happy place, that's all. You know, it was just... We were trying to write a children's song. That was the basic idea. And there's nothing more to be read into it than there is in the lyrics of any children's song.

"Yellow Submarine" is a definite classic; sometimes I'll find myself humming it or singing it to myself, quite randomly. I attribute this to the fact that as a young kid I watched Yellow Submarine in art class, and all I remember of the film is that animated sub. (That will change soon, once I watch the movie and review it for this blog.) The song has a way of getting into your psyche, for sure. :P

That's all for today! See you tomorrow.

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Heard It Tally: 21
Songs Completed: 108