“Glass Onion” by The Beatles

"Glass Onion" is John Lennon's prank on the Beatle-watchers, tucked into the band's 1968 double album The Beatles, the one everybody calls the White Album. It's his song under the Lennon–McCartney credit, written to bamboozle the fans who combed every lyric for hidden meanings, a habit that got on his nerves. So he stuffed it with nods to "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am the Walrus" and "The Fool on the Hill", among others, threw in a line about who the Walrus really was purely to thicken the fog, and name-checked the Cast Iron Shore, the south Liverpool coast the locals call the Cazzy.

Lennon sings and plays acoustic guitar, with George Harrison on electric, Paul McCartney on bass, piano and recorder, Ringo Starr on drums and tambourine, and a string section of four violins, two violas and two cellos; George Martin and Chris Thomas produced. Lennon had also offered the title as a band name to the Iveys, the 1968 Apple signing who became Badfinger.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.