There’s A Subliminal Message John Lennon Put On A Classic Beatles Song

John Lennon’s first marriage to Cynthia Lennon may have seemed picture-perfect on the surface, but behind the scenes, their relationship was crumbling. The cracks in their marriage were even reflected in one of The Beatles’ songs, “Good Morning, Good Morning,” from their iconic album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The song, released in 1967, showcased The Beatles’ experimental and surreal approach to music. However, amidst the artistic exploration, John Lennon managed to infuse his personal struggles into the lyrics. According to Paul McCartney in Barry Miles’ biography Many Years From Now, Lennon felt trapped in his relationship with Cynthia. He found inspiration for the song from a soap opera called Meet the Wife, symbolizing his boredom with suburban life and his deteriorating marriage. McCartney explained, “It was about his boring life at the time… he was that bored, but I think he was also starting to get alarm bells, and so ‘Good morning, good morning.'”

In a creative twist, Lennon included sounds of escaping animals in the song. Beatles’ studio engineer Geoff Emerick revealed that Lennon specifically requested the inclusion of animal sounds, each one representing a progressively more menacing threat. Dogs barking, cats meowing, horses neighing, and a fox being chased by hunters all added an extra layer of symbolism to Lennon’s desire to break free from his stagnant existence.

Interestingly, in later years, Lennon dismissed “Good Morning, Good Morning” as a “throwaway” song. In a 1980 Playboy interview with David Sheff, he candidly expressed his lack of fondness for many of the songs he had written for The Beatles. Lennon associated the phrase “Good morning, good morning” with a Kellogg’s cereal commercial that happened to be playing in the background while he was writing the song. ‘Good Morning’ is mine,” Lennon told Sheff. “It’s a throwaway, a piece of garbage, I always thought. The ‘Good morning, good morning’ was from a Kellogg’s cereal commercial. I always had the TV on very low in the background when I was writing, and it came over, and then I wrote the song.”