My Top 1000 Songs #195: I Am The Walrus

Been a few months since we've had any Beatles here, so I guess we're due. And it's a doozy! I can't say for sure, but I think "I Am The Walrus" was the first of the Beatles' more psychedelia-oriented tunes I came across as a kid trying to get my arms around their catalog. After getting comfortable with the more obvious radio hits, hearing this was my first realization that... hey, these guys are kinda weird. (A few years later, it would be joined by... hey, these guys took a LOT of drugs. But at 9 or 10 years old, I don't think I quite grasped that concept.

Of course, as a child in the throes of AM radio Top 40, just starting to dip his toes into the broader reaches of the FM dial, hearing such weirdness from not just any pop band, but the freakin' Beatles, was pretty revelatory. You mean you don't need to play by some sort of pop music rulebook? That was a pretty useful lesson for me.

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