Songs Inspired By News Headlines - The Beatles – She’s Leaving Home 1967

Tweet

Children running away from home make the news on a daily basis but as Lennon-McCartney composed their most celebrated album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, McCartney was inspired by one such story in particular. It concerned a girl called Melanie Coe, then aged seventeen, who simply left a goodbye note for her sleeping parents in London and ran off to be with her boyfriend, who was actually a casino croupier, not a motor-trade worker as the song suggests. The song uses two points of view. The girl makes her escape, and in lines added by Lennon as what McCartney now describes as a Greek tragedy chorus effect, her parents read the note and their hearts break over their loss. The song adds stark social realism to an album filled with surreal drug-induced references in numbers like Lucy In The Sky and Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite. She’s Leaving Home injects a subtle sense of discreet domestic tragedy. She’s Leaving Home may be the best Beatles song ever and it is certainly my favourite of all their lovely songs though remarkably it was never issued as a single. Youtube – The song Arthur Chappell