"Cry Baby Cry" is a song on The Beatles eponymous album, commonly called "The White Album". It is the third to last song on the double album, occurring right before Revolution #9. It is a standard verse chorus verse song, written and performed by John Lennon, telling the story of a royal family engaging in simple pastimes.

For me, this song is an example of how having access to the author's comment on a song can change the meaning of a song. John Lennon stated he thought the song was "a piece of rubbish" and didn't think it important. I always took the song to be slightly sinister: in part, because I misunderstood the lyric "seance in the dark" to be "assailants in the dark". I had a theory that the events in "Cry Baby Cry", about conflicts in a royal family, were the prelude to the events of Revolution #9. And while I can always decide my own reading has more meaning, reading too much into the White Album has been proven to be a bad idea.

But I do find it interesting that the pattern in "Cry Baby Cry", of people doing things in parallel in separate rooms, seemingly innocent activities, that somehow seem very tense, is a pretty good parallel to the conception and recording of The White Album.


https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/cry-baby-cry/

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