Dark lyrics
Lyrical content dealing with violence, despair, alienation, or mortality
Analysis
By Year
Song count per year
By Songwriter
% of each member's catalogue with this tag (by writing credit)
By Era
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Songs(18 of 19)
Don't Bother Me
Unusually bleak for 1963 Beatles
Run for Your Life
Murder threat as romantic stance
Think for Yourself
Dismissal, ruin, misery
She Said She Said
Death, madness, dissociation
Tomorrow Never Knows
Dying, void, ignorance and hate
Love You To
Mortality, betrayal, social hostility
Eleanor Rigby
A Day in the Life
Indifference to death and war
I Am the Walrus
'dead dog's eye', 'untimely death'
Revolution 9
Violent fragments, naked exposure, broken images
Helter Skelter
"Helter skelter" as descent imagery; "coming down fast"
Yer Blues
Suicidal imagery, eagle picking eye
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Violence, addiction imagery
I'm So Tired
Sleepless distress, insanity
Only a Northern Song
'There's nobody there'
Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Cartoon-comic violence
Mean Mr. Mustard
Miser sleeps in a hole; shouts obscenities
Carry That Weight
Burden of fame, band tensions
Updated