# The Beatles — Tomorrow Never Knows The Beatles’s Tomorrow Never Knows (1966) appears on 2 of our lists — Psychedelic Rock and Twice Over, highest at No. 1 in Psychedelic Rock. Every verdict, in full. - **Released:** 1966 - **Label:** Parlophone - **On:** Psychedelic Rock and Twice Over - **Updated:** 2026-08-30 - **Artist:** [The Beatles](https://waxonia.com/artist/the-beatles/) - **Canonical page:** https://waxonia.com/track/the-beatles--tomorrow-never-knows/ ## What 2 lists say ### No. 1 in [Psychedelic Rock](https://waxonia.com/genre/psychedelic-rock/) One chord, five tape loops, a drum pattern lifted from nowhere and a vocal sent through a rotating speaker. The most radical thing on any pop record of the decade, at the end of side two. ### Picked by [Twice Over](https://waxonia.com/theme/twice-over/) Three years on from a handclap-and-harmony single: one chord, a tape loop orchestra and a vocal fed through a rotating speaker. The gap between this and the entry above is the shortest distance any artist here travels between two of our rankings. ## Analysis 6 sections, the first drop at 0:04, 2% of the way in. - **Tempo:** 129.2 BPM — holds throughout - **Dynamic range:** 2.5 dB — compressed hard — very little between the quiet and the loud - **Length:** 2:58 - `0:00` A · **intro** (bar -2), instrumental — opens the record below its own average energy — playing: drums, bass - `0:19` B · **peak** (bar 8), sung — sits at the top of this record's range — playing: drums, bass, vocals, other - `0:58` C · **peak** (bar 29), instrumental — sits at the top of this record's range — playing: drums, bass, other - `1:26` C · **peak** (bar 44), sung — sits at the top of this record's range — playing: drums, bass, vocals - `1:51` C · **peak** (bar 58), sung — sits at the top of this record's range — playing: drums, bass, vocals, other - `2:42` D · **outro** (bar 86), instrumental — the closing fall — playing: bass **Drop** at 0:04 (bar 1). A drop is a moment, not a stretch. **What is playing.** Separated into parts by a source-separation model, so each lane is the instrument it names. - **drums:** the drum kit, separated from the mix - **bass:** the bass part, separated from the mix - **vocals:** the voice, separated from the mix - **other:** everything else — synths, guitars, keys, strings Measured from the YouTube master on 2026-08-29. Section labels describe how the energy moves, not musical form. Anything we were not confident enough to state is omitted rather than hedged. ## Listen [Search Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/search/The%20Beatles%20Tomorrow%20Never%20Knows) · [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=m4BuziKGMy4) --- Hand-curated by Waxonia. We host no audio; all links point to streaming platforms.