Some of the lyrics of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, and Leonard Cohen are the vaguest of all pop songs except, of course, for those that degenerate into utter absurdity. They are not different from much of contemporary poetry, which has also become so subtle and indirect as to admit to a wide variety of possible interpretations…. Very little can definitely be said about the theme of "I Am the Walrus," except that it is an exceptionally unpleasant song about death or ugliness or perversion or a combination of the three and even more. "Norwegian Wood" is a hauntingly beautiful lyric on a more pleasant but equally vague theme…. More than one individual has suggested that this is a narrative about a drug trip and that "Norwegian Wood" is yet another slang term for marijuana. But apart from the surrealism of the action and perhaps the exotic instrumental accompaniment, a result of the use of the sitar for the first time in rock music, there is little to support such an argument. The girl suggests a sexual relationship and perhaps even love, although it is certainly casual and impermanent…. The woman is intriguing, even intoxicating, as many women are, but the poet does not seem to miss her when she leaves. Their relationship is pleasant while it lasts, but not mourned when it is over. Most importantly and most perplexingly, we are not sure whether this is a real woman or whether she represents something else—like marijuana. On the other hand, for all its ambiguities, the song does have a reasonably definite subject and theme: it is about an enjoyable, transient experience, and it suggests that pleasant experiences may all be temporary and should be accepted as such and not mourned excessively when they end. Within these limits, the individual reader is free to set up his own definite interpretation, provided that it is supported by evidence within the poem. (pp. 15-16)

[The] Lennon-McCartney song "All You Need is Love" [contains obvious deliberate ambiguity]. "What kind of love?" we ask ourselves, and scraps of music playing in the back of the song give us all sorts of answers: the modern, unromanticized love of "She Loves You, Yeh, Yeh, Yeh, Yeh," the romantic love of "Greensleeves," the Christian agape of Christmas and the old carol "What Child Is This?" But it is possible, we discover when we think about it, that "love" encompasses all of these meanings, that they encompass each other, and that the love we need is multidimensional. The song exploits the possibilities of an ambiguous love to make an important—if not particularly original—point. (p. 134)

The most clearly ambiguous phrase (to use an oxymoron) [in "'Let It Be"] is the title "Let It Be" To what does "it" refer? To an answer? An answer to what question? And just how do we "let it be?" But another and perhaps more important ambiguity may lie in "Mother Mary," who speaks the words of wisdom. In rock lyrics Mary is frequently a personification of marijuana …, and she may be just that here. But Mother Mary suggests Mary, Christ's mother, and some religious implications are added to the poem. If the figure is deliberately ambiguous, what would be the point of combining the associations of the Virgin Mary and marijuana? Does the rest of the poem assume added meaning in light of this ambiguous Mary? Does it explain what the answer might be, how "it" might be, what "it" might resolve? (p. 136)

Sergeant Pepper has a kind of unity absent on most rock albums. The individual lyrics are, of course, impressive, and they are the place to begin a discussion of that album; but a discussion of any one lyric must soon give way to a discussion of the meaning of the whole…. (p. 290)

[The] two "Sergeant Pepper" songs frame a series of distinct studies of great musical and poetic variety, putting the whole album in the context of a stage performance (the illusion is furthered by "A Little Help From My Friends"). The last cut on the second side is parenthetical, outside the performance context, a new perspective on all that has gone before.

The place to begin a consideration of the album is with the individual lyrics, some of which have already been the subject of considerable discussion. Only after one has grasped the songs individually can one begin drawing patterns of meaning from the whole album. "Lucy In the Sky" is widely interpreted as an acid trip and an acrostic for LSD. Certainly both the tonal distortions of the music and the rich sensual imagery of the poem suggest the popular conception of such a trip…. "Lucy In the Sky" is a powerful poem even if it is not an acid song: the title image suggests an awareness that the rest of the song develops, an awareness of the most common of things in the most uncommon of contexts, imbueing Lucy with mystical attraction. Perhaps the song is really about the awareness of the extraordinary within the ordinary—but then that is precisely what LSD is reported (perhaps erroneously) to open one's eyes to. (pp. 301-02)

"A Day in the Life" is, with the possible exception of "Lucy in the Sky," the most haunting and the most ambiguous song on the album. Madison Avenue has managed to make the phrase "turn on" virtually meaningless by applying it to everything from shades of cosmetics to chocolate malts, but the expression always did have a certain ambiguity to it. First, of course, it means drugs…. But the other images in the song suggest that we are being asked to turn on to an awareness of the bankruptcy of life as we usually live it in the twentieth century, and to an awareness of what life might be. The man blew his mind out just when he finally made the grade, the war was won but nobody really cared. Life goes on, a collage of nearly missed buses and holes to be carefully counted. If "Lucy in the Sky" was a trip that turned us on to the magic of what is conventional, all that magic has disappeared in "A Day in the Life." The trip is over, and it was a bummer.

The comparison between these two songs brings us to a more important question: what kind of a statement does the album as a whole make? Everyone … agrees that yes, it does have a unity, and it is obvious that the unity is intentional…. But what kind of a statement does this unity make?

The context of the whole album is provided by the opening two songs: this is a performance by Sergeant Pepper (Ringo Star, alias Billy Shears—he wears the sergeant's stripes on his uniform) and his lonely hearts club band. Two things are important: the band is lonely, and it is performing. Perhaps the two are interrelated: performers are generally lonely people, lonely people perform when they pretend not to be lonely and in an attempt to escape their loneliness. What is especially significant, however, is that Sergeant Pepper and his band are aware of that fact that they are performing, that they are acting out an illusion—others are not as aware, but then again they are probably not as lonely. Some are off into a drug thing; others tell themselves that things are, after all, getting better all the time, or rationalize their disillusionment by excusing themselves. Some withdraw into self-isolation and others drown any misgivings they might have in the noise and excitement of a circus performance. "What we were talking about," says George Harrison bluntly in "Within You Without You," "is what is hypocritical and what is honest, and who hides behind what walls of illusion." But if the lyrics of this song outline inadequate responses people make when they are vaguely aware that something is wrong with their lives, the next three songs present us with a gallery of incredibly shallow individuals. The first proposes the most mundane of marriages to a mail-order bride; the second falls in love with a meter maid he happens to see writing up tickets; the third drives in self-impressed fashion aimlessly around town looking for pick-ups. What makes the whole despicable crowd especially disgusting (and The Beatles' comment especially morose) is the irrepressible high spirits of the music, which ironically mocks the words themselves and piles irony on top of irony. And then the band, Sergeant Pepper's Band, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, breaks in with its initial statement, now made depressingly meaningful: "Sergeant Pepper's lonely." The "l" is lower case; the phrase ends with a period. The band is making a statement: "Sergeant Pepper is lonely," and that's what we've been talking about for the duration of this performance. By now we as listeners have begun to feel a trifle lonely too, and "A Day In the Life," with the alienated, impassive attitude of the observers and its resounding chord dying-out-to-nothing at the end is almost too much. But it is too much not simply because of the song itself, but because the entire weight of the whole album comes crashing down on that final chord. And the whole weight of Sergeant Pepper is a lot of weight. (pp. 302-04)