There are so many great songs in existence, and if I had to pick one as my all time favorite, it would be Strawberry Fields Forever. It encompasses everything I love about pop music: dreamy lyrical imagery, moments of transcendent creative beauty, emotional impact, and of course certain intangibles that exist on a purely personal level. This is among the peaks of the creative union between the Beatles and George Martin. John Lennon wrote the song, but Martin added all the orchestration, spliced the tapes, mixed it all into a finished work of art.
There are a number of particular moments I love:
1) Guitar from 0:18-0:22
2) Guitar during second verse from 0:40-0:54
3) Drums from left speaker 1:00-1:10+, 1:44-2:00+, and 3:00+
4) Horn riff from 1:10-1:13, etc.
5) backward percussion after 1:26
6) double-tracked vocals from 2:27-2:32
7) Guitar from 2:58-3:00 and 3:10-3:12
8) starting at 3:35, the somewhat jarring cocktail party atmosphere with the scary siren thing that creeps back in after the initial fade out. I have a love hate deal with that part. I suppose it wouldn't be SFF without it. It contains that lethargic 'Cranberry Sauce'/'I buried Paul' voice.
As usual, the Beatles copyright owners are very stingy with allowing their songs on youtube. Too bad, I guess you get what you get. That sucks. Well, perhaps you have your own version you can listen to, or obtain from somewhere. Maybe you already know the song well enough. Sorry.
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