# Songs that reference Beatles song titles **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 4, 2007, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-reference-beatles-song-titles/428834 "2007-12-04T21:30:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-reference-beatles-song-titles/428834/21 "2007-12-05T05:12:36Z")
More Beatles self-reference from **"If I Fell"** _'Cause I’ve been in love before And I found out love is more Than just holding hands_ (A reference to “I Want to Hold Your Hand”) And then there’s **“Garden Party”** by **Rick Nelson** : _Yoko brought her walrus…_ ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-reference-beatles-song-titles/428834/22 "2007-12-05T05:17:36Z")
[QUOTE=fishbicycle] And if it _was_ referring to “Walrus” it would have to have been “goo goo goo joob,” because that’s the lyric in the Beatles record. [/QUOTE] Patrick Humphries, _Paul Simon_ > [@](#): > > Mrs. Robinson’s refrain ‘Coo coo ca choo’ owed a nod to Lennon’s ‘I Am the Walrus.’ Phonetically, there’s not much difference between the two, and the cadence of the melody repeats The Beatles song. I’ve been listening to the song for 40 years and I think this is the first time anyone has questioned the connection. It was taken for granted when the song came out and the connection is made in just about every book on them. If it weren’t right I’d have to wonder why Simon hasn’t taken time in 40 years to explicitly deny it, because he’s done that about other theories of his work. [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_the_Walrus) has a weird exegesis of why the Beatles didn’t steal it from Simon: > [@](#): > > The song also contains the unusual exclamation goo goo g’joob. Various unsatisfactory hypotheses exist regarding the origin and meaning of these syllables. One popular, yet impossible, claim is that the phrase was derived from the very similar “koo koo ka choo” in Paul Simon’s song Mrs. Robinson, written in 1967. However, the film The Graduate, where “Mrs. Robinson” debuted, was not released until December 1967, a month after the release of “I Am the Walrus”, and The Graduate Original Soundtrack (which contained only fragments of the final version of “Mrs. Robinson”) was not released until January 1968. > > Perhaps due to the close chronological timing of the release of the two songs, the “Walrus” chorus is often misquoted as “Mrs. Robinson”'s “koo koo ka choo”, although the lyrics to “Walrus” were published as part of the Magical Mystery Tour EP packaging, so there is no debate to the actual lyric. Seriously, back in 1968 everybody thought that it was homage to the Beatles. Paul was a huge fan of Sgt. Pepper’s. He was trying to create an album of that magnitude himself and was crushed that somebody else got their first and better. S&G’s career was running in odd parallel to the Beatles’ at this point. Parsley, Sage is full of hip, sassy, intelligent songs that were beginning to make comment on the system, similar to Revolver. He didn’t have an answer to Sgt. Pepper’s - he worked much more slowly than the lads, but look at Magical Mystery Tour, a side that a concept suite and a side of recent singles. Just like the Bookends album had a side one suite and a side of recent singles. And The Graduate Soundtrack, released with not much new stuff, some old stuff and just plain stuffing in the form of movie score music. That would be a good, if not perfect, description of the Yellow Submarine Album. The the groups start falling apart. The lads wrote and worked mostly separately for the eclectic White Album filled with music traditions they hadn’t tackled before while Simon wrote songs about Artie’s not being there and tackled musical traditions they hadn’t tackled before. Synchronicity? Or just the feel of the era? Or deliberate winks back at forth at their peers? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-reference-beatles-song-titles/428834.md?page=1)