#110: Good Day Sunshine

Written by: John Lennon & Paul McCartney
Released: August 5, 1966
Appears on: Revolver
Lead vocal: Paul

The way the Beatles and George Martin sequenced albums even before Sgt. Pepper's was in such an ingenious way that it always keeps listeners on their toes. Of course, the reason why the Beatles cared so much about album sequencing was the fact that they were popular back in the days before you could skip a song so they worked their butts off to try to make every song as engaging as the next. Martin always tuck to the rule that both sides of an album should start and end with a strong song, which made each side to a Beatles record almost feel like mini-albums themselves. Revolver is certainly no exception. 
Like the fade-in intro to "Eight Days A Week", which served as the opener to side two of Beatles For Sale, "Good Day Sunshine"'s fade-in opens side two of Revolver, powered by Paul's blazing piano. The other instruments on the song include just Paul's bass, John's guitar and Ringo's drums. George and John contribute the backing vocals and handclaps. Martin also contributes a piano part.
"Good Day Sunshine" is just good, clean, pop fun from the master of that type of music. It encapsulates summer...those days when every morning you just want to scream "HELLO WORLD!" because that beautiful sunrise just woke you up. The lyrics are filled with great imagery, but the song's lightheartedness cannot be escaped when you consider the heavy material that John deals with in his songs that surround it. That doesn't dampen the song's strengths though. It's just a really, really happy song and the fact that it adds to the variety of Revolver only strengthens it and the album. 
The release history for "Good Day Sunshine" is surprisingly slim. Despite being one of the group's most popular songs (it's always on the radio), it was never issued as a single and never appeared on a compilation. (Paul did release a live recording as a single in 1990 to promote Tripping The Live Fantastic.)