“She's Leaving Home” by The Beatles

Tucked into Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, "She's Leaving Home" plays like a kitchen-sink short story set to strings: a teenage girl slips out of the house, fed up with parents who mean well but smother her, and they're left bewildered and wrecked when they find she's gone. Paul McCartney wrote the verse and sings it; John Lennon wrote the chorus, and the two sing that together.

Here's the kicker: nobody in the band plays a note. George Harrison and Ringo Starr sat this one out entirely, and the whole backing comes from a string orchestra arranged by Mike Leander, with Sheila Bromberg's harp and Gordon Pearce's double bass in among the violins, violas and cellos. George Martin produced, Geoff Emerick engineered, and baroque pop rarely sounded this heartbroken.

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