The Beatles are so omnipresent that it’s easy to take them for granted. I answered a question on r/musictheory about that weird chord in the chorus of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and it made me remember that the song exists, that it’s super cool, and that it would be an interesting topic both for my music tech and songwriting students.
This song was famously assembled in the studio from multiple takes, and its production is quite complicated. Like many later Beatles psychedelic masterpieces, this ended up being more a piece of electronic music than rock. But before we get into the production of the track, let’s talk about the “notes on the page” aspect of the song. John Lennon is very good at making unconventional songwriting ideas sound intuitive and inevitable.