Australian singles chart:
Lady Madonna entered the Kent charts on 30 May 1968 and peaked at #1. The song was #16 on the Top 100 of 1968.
Songwriters:
Primarily Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon-McCartney
Producer:
George Martin
Record label of Australian release:
Parlophone
Songfacts:
Lady Madonna was the last Beatles release on Parlophone (Capitol in the USA). All future releases were on Apple Records, the label The Beatles created, starting with Hey Jude. It was recorded in February 1968 before the Beatles left for India.
Paul McCartney said Lady Madonna is a tribute to women everywhere. It was inspired by a photo of a woman in Vietnam suckling her child, over the caption “Mountain Madonna.” The photo appeared in the January 1965 issue of National Geographic as part of an article called “American Special Forces in Action in Viet Nam.”
“She looked very proud and she had a baby,” McCartney told the magazine. “I saw that as a kind of Madonna thing, mother and child.”
The piano arrangement was lifted from a ’50s jazz classic: Bad Penny Blues by Humphrey Lyttleton.
Read more: www.songfacts.com/facts/the-beatles/lady-madonna
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