If you’re under 60, you prob­a­bly heard the line “I read the news today, oh boy” before encoun­ter­ing the song it opens. Even after you dis­cov­ered the work of the Bea­t­les, it may have tak­en you some time to under­stand what, exact­ly, it was that John Lennon read in the news. The “lucky man who made the grade” and “blew his mind out in a car” turn out to have been inspired by the young Guin­ness heir Tara Browne, who’d fatal­ly wiped out in his Lotus Elan. The fig­ure of 4,000 holes in the roads of Black­burn came from anoth­er page of the same edi­tion of the Dai­ly Mail. These are just two of the mem­o­rable images in “A Day in the Life,” which son­i­cal­ly recon­structs the fab­ric of the nine­teen-six­ties as the Bea­t­les knew it.

In his new video below, Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, calls “A Day in the Life” “arguably the Bea­t­les’ best song.” Crit­ic Ian Mac­Don­ald is rather less ambigu­ous in his book Rev­o­lu­tion in the Head: The Bea­t­les’ Records and the Six­ties, pro­claim­ing it “their finest sin­gle achieve­ment.”

And if any sin­gle fac­tor shaped its devel­op­ment, that fac­tor was LSD. “A song about per­cep­tion — a sub­ject cen­tral both to late-peri­od Bea­t­les and the coun­ter­cul­ture at large — ‘A Day in the Life’ con­cerned ‘real­i­ty’ only to the extent that this had been revealed by LSD to be large­ly in the eye of the behold­er,” he writes. Lennon may have proven to be the group’s most ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­ast of that short­cut to enlight­en­ment. It’s worth not­ing, as Puschak does, that it was Browne who first “turned on” Paul McCart­ney.

Though pri­mar­i­ly John’s work, “A Day in the Life” would­n’t be what it is with­out Paul’s dou­ble-time bridge, whose jaun­ti­ly nar­ra­tive ordi­nar­i­ness makes the vers­es all the more tran­scen­dent. The need for some kind of tran­si­tion between these dis­parate John and Paul parts led to George Mar­tin’s com­mis­sion­ing a 40-piece orches­tra instruct­ed to play from the low­est notes up to the high­est, a col­lec­tive glis­san­do quadru­ple-record­ed and mixed to sound like the end of the world. In the­o­ry, per­haps, all this — to say noth­ing of Lennon’s ref­er­ences to the Albert Hall, the House of Lords, and his own role in Richard Lester’s How I Won the War — should­n’t work togeth­er. But the result, as Mac­Don­ald puts it, remains one of “the most pen­e­trat­ing and inno­v­a­tive artis­tic reflec­tions of its era,” as expe­ri­enced by the young men stand­ing at its very cen­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 17-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bea­t­les Songs: 338 Tracks Let You Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of the Icon­ic Band

The Exper­i­men­tal Move­ment That Cre­at­ed The Bea­t­les’ Weird­est Song, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”

The Amaz­ing Record­ing His­to­ry of The Bea­t­les’ “Here Comes the Sun”

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

The Mak­ing of the Last Bea­t­les Song, “Now and Then”: A Short Film

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

On his 84th birth­day this past Sat­ur­day, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keep­ing with not only his still-seri­ous tour­ing sched­ule, but also his appar­ent­ly irre­press­ible instinct to work: on music, on writ­ing, on paint­ing, on sculp­ture. Even his occa­sion­al tweet­ing draws an appre­cia­tive audi­ence every time. The Bob Dylan of 2025 is not, of course, the Bob Dylan of 1965, but then, the Bob Dylan of 1965 was­n’t the Bob Dylan of 1964. This con­stant artis­tic change is just what his fans appre­ci­ate, not that they don’t still put on his ear­ly stuff with reg­u­lar­i­ty.

In the ear­li­est of that ear­ly stuff, as music YouTu­ber David Hart­ley explains in the new video above, Dylan “wrote songs by rein­vent­ing tra­di­tion.” Using noth­ing but his voice, gui­tar, and har­mon­i­ca, the young Dylan “imi­tat­ed some of the most well-known folk melodies,” plac­ing him­self in that long Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of bor­row­ing and rein­ter­pre­ta­tion. But as dra­ma­tized in the recent film A Com­plete Unknown, he soon “went elec­tric,” and with the change in instru­men­ta­tion came a change in song­writ­ing method: “He would just come up with end­less pages of lyrics, some­thing he once called ‘the long piece of vom­it.’ ”

The advice to “puke it out now and clean it up lat­er” has long been giv­en, in var­i­ous forms, to aspir­ing artists every­where. One aspect worth high­light­ing about the way Dylan did it was that, despite writ­ing pop­u­lar songs, he drew a great deal of inspi­ra­tion from more tra­di­tion­al lit­er­a­ture, to the point that his notes hard­ly appear to con­tain any­thing resem­bling vers­es or cho­rus­es at all. Only in the stu­dio, with a band behind him, could Dylan give these ideas their final musi­cal shape — or rather, their final shape on that par­tic­u­lar album, often to be mod­i­fied end­less­ly, and some­times rad­i­cal­ly, over decades of live per­for­mances to come.

Hart­ley tells of more dra­mat­ic changes to Dylan’s music and his process of cre­at­ing. The motor­cy­cle crash, the Base­ment Tapes, the open E tun­ing, Blood on the Tracks: all of these now lie half a cen­tu­ry or more in the past. To go over all the ways Dylan has approached music since then would require more hours than all but the most rabid enthu­si­asts (though there are many) would watch. The video does include a 60 Min­utes clip from 2004 in which Dylan says that “those ear­ly songs were almost mag­i­cal­ly writ­ten,” and that he would­n’t be able to cre­ate them any­more. But then, nor could the Dylan of High­way 61 Revis­it­ed have record­ed Time Out of Mind, and nor, for that mat­ter, could the Dylan of Time Out of Mind have record­ed any of Dylan’s albums from this decade — or those that could, quite pos­si­bly, be still to come.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in Col­orized 1963 Footage

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Com­pare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Com­plete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Get­ting Worse

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

On Youtube, jazz enthu­si­ast Jonathan Holmes declares: “I can guar­an­tee this is the clean­est sound­ing Louis Arm­strong record you’ll ever hear! With the orig­i­nal trans­fer sup­plied by Nick Del­low, here is the moth­er record which was shipped by Okeh to Ger­many for their Odeon press­ings. The sound is won­der­ful­ly imme­di­ate, and crys­tal clear.” No crack­le and pop. That’s how Holmes describes the pris­tine record­ing you can hear above of the Louis Arm­strong clas­sic, “Ain’t Mis­be­havin’.” Below, hear anoth­er “moth­er met­al” record­ing of anoth­er Arm­strong song, “Knee Drops.” Enjoy the ear­ly Satch­mo in all of its won­der­ful clar­i­ty.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Aging Louis Arm­strong Sings “What a Won­der­ful World” in 1967, Dur­ing the Viet­nam War & The Civ­il Rights Strug­gle

1,000 Hours of Ear­ly Jazz Record­ings Now Online: Archive Fea­tures Louis Arm­strong, Duke Elling­ton & Much More

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

Louis Arm­strong Remem­bers How He Sur­vived the 1918 Flu Epi­dem­ic in New Orleans

East meets West, and the Ancient, the Mod­ern. That’s what hap­pens every time Luna Lee plays one of your favorites on the Gayageum, a Kore­an instru­ment that dates back to the 6th cen­tu­ry. We’ve fea­tured her work in years past (see the Relat­eds below). Above, watch one of her stand­out performances—a cov­er of “The Man Who Sold The World,” the song first writ­ten by David Bowie in 1970, then famous­ly per­formed by Nir­vana on MTV Unplugged in 1993. An alter­nate video fea­tures Luna on vocals here. Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Blues Songs By John Lee Hook­er, B.B. King & Mud­dy Waters Played on the Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s Ver­sion of “Lit­tle Wing” Played on Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment, the Gayageum