"Good Day Sunshine" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was written mainly by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. McCartney intended it as a song in the style of the Lovin' Spoonful's contemporaneous hit single "Daydream". The recording includes multiple pianos played in the barrelhouse style and evokes a vaudevillian mood.
The composition contains key changes and metric anomalies, and closes with voices chanting the song title. Together with its lyrics celebrating romantic love and sunshine, the recording contrasts with the more austere and experimental aesthetic of Revolver. Among music critics, some writers have welcomed the song's lightheartedness while others view it as a track that dilutes the album's strengths.
"Good Day Sunshine" has been covered by the Tremeloes, Claudine Longet and Robbie Williams. McCartney re-recorded the song for his 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street and has regularly performed it in concert. The song was used as the wake-up music on the Space Shuttle mission STS-135. In November 2005, McCartney played it live to the crew of the International Space Station as part of a concert link-up to the space station.
Background and inspiration
Paul McCartney wrote "Good Day Sunshine" at Kenwood, John Lennon's house in Surrey. Drawing inspiration from the sunny day, McCartney composed the melody on Lennon's piano. He later said that Lennon helped write the song, but "it was basically mine." Lennon recalled that the song was McCartney's and that he perhaps "threw in a line or something".
McCartney said that he was influenced by the Lovin' Spoonful's hit single "Daydream" and was trying to write a song in that vein. Lennon and George Harrison had attended the Lovin' Spoonful's concert at the Marquee in London in April 1966; the Beatles and members of the Rolling Stones soon lauded them as the "hot new group". Author Steve Turner writes that the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" could have been another source of inspiration for McCartney.
Composition
The song uses the keys of A major and D major. Following a four-bar introduction, it opens with the chorus. Thereafter, the structure comprises three rounds of verse and chorus, in the second of which the verse section contains an instrumental passage; the song ends with a repetition of the chorus, followed by a fadeout coda. Musicologist Alan Pollack likens the musical form to that of a folk ballad with a pop element made explicit through the intro, instrumental passage and coda.
The chords used in the introduction (E throughout) and chorus (B, F, E and E7) suggest a key of B major. In musicologist Walter Everett's description, however, the B chord "reveals itself to be the V of V of A" once the verse is heard for the first time. The key change to D major occurs midway through the second verse, for the piano solo.
The six-bar choruses depart from the standard 4/4 time signature by including bars in 3/4 and 5/4 time. Music critic Ian MacDonald describes the chorus as a section that "drop[s] beats left, right, and centre" in contrast to the "barrelhouse 4/4" of the verse. In his analysis of the song, Pollack says that while he had long considered the chorus's metre to vary in this way, the effect is more one of syncopation within 4/4, rather than formal changes in time signature. Within the three two-bar pairings, he continues, this is achieved through rhythmic accents falling on beats 1 and 4 of the first bar and beat 3 of the second bar.
Like the Revolver track "She Said She Said", the song closes with an imitative canon in the voices. Author Mark Prendergast likens the ending to that of "I Want to Tell You", saying that where the latter closes with an uplifting Indian devotional quality, "Good Day Sunshine" features a "raga-like edge to its vocal climax". The ending is given extra emphasis through the melody ascending a semitone from the final chorus, to an F7 chord.
According to author Mark Hertsgaard, the lyrics combine an appreciation of the sun's life-affirming qualities with a "standard boy–girl love story". In focusing on the latter theme, the song serves as a comparative rarity on Revolver, where the Beatles otherwise avoid the subject of love. As with some of his other songs on the album, this trait set McCartney apart from Lennon and Harrison, whose lyrics increasingly addressed existential concerns.