Lovely Rita

The track touches on work (Traffic warden on duty), and on the motifs of found inspiration and clothes. The telling is sung in a persona, something the Beatles had reached for on 'A Hard Day's Night' 3 years earlier. The lyric turns to simile ('Look a little like a military man'). A multi-syllabic rhyme arrives once, "older/shoulder". The title is sung in the refrain and also drops a name into it, and the language is full of nonsense words ('Tchic', 'da da', 'ah ah').

'Lovely Rita' is a psychedelic and music hall piece, written in E major and taken at about 87 BPM. Listen to a vocal ad-lib (outro ad-libs including 'I don't believe it') and group vocals. It has a keyboard solo. Intentional or not, the chords run E → B → C♯m → F♯ → B, the same shape 'Lady Madonna' plays as F → C → Dm7 → G7 → C. Looking at the arrangement, 'Act Naturally' plays G → D7 → G → C and 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy' plays A → E7 → A → D, the same progression in different keys, which 'You Like Me Too Much', 'All You Need Is Love' and this one also make.

Tracked across four sessions at EMI Studio 2, with vari-speed applied throughout so the song sounds in E♭ despite being played in E. The Hamburg Steinway was played by Paul McCartney and George Martin. The session had the Ludwig Super Classic in the room, a habit that peaked in 1965. Eight Beatles recordings use tape echo in all, this among them. 1967 brought 25 songs, and this was the 7th of them, the 128th record of their career.

This track is McCartney’s, both the writing and the voice. George Martin played piano, as he also did on 'No Reply' and 'Matchbox', with non-traditional percussion and body percussion filling it out, and the non-traditional percussion appears on two Beatles records in all. You can hear 'Tchic, tchic' comb interjections on it.

The public first heard it when Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band appeared on May 26, 1967. This is the Beatles' 130th record, and the 12th of the 24 they released in that year.