Taylor Momsen, lead singer of The Pretty Reckless, named The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” as the perfect song she wishes she had written. She said so in a recent interview with Rick Beato. The track sits on the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Beato asked her which song came to mind first when he said “perfect song.” She didn’t need long. “‘A Day in the Life,’ I think, is a perfect song… There’s a perfect song and then there are songs I wish I’d written. There’s tiers to that,” Momsen said before adding, “I mean, I wish I wrote ‘A Day in the Life.'”
Then she turned to the band’s sound. “I mean how did they… Just that amount of quantity and quality and innovation and leaps and bounds forward into the innovation of music. And forget that – the sonics alone. What is that? Why do Beatles records still sound better than every record recorded after the Beatles records?” Momsen said.
The talk covered a lot of ground. Momsen and Beato went over the track order of The Pretty Reckless’ newest album, Dear God, and how she writes songs. They also covered how she learned to sing over the odd time signatures in Soundgarden songs, her days as an actress, and the shows she played with Soundgarden and AC/DC.
Momsen has long named The Beatles and Soundgarden as her biggest musical influences. “I had two kind of ‘musical renaissances’ in my life, the first being The Beatles when I was little. It was the first band my dad ever played for me and I fell in love with it. It was the reason I wanted to be in a band,” she recalled.
“The second was when I was a little older, I discovered Soundgarden and it changed my life. It spoke to me in a way… just the initial impact of the mood and the tone and [Chris Cornell’s] voice. I didn’t understand it but I understood it,” Momsen said.
All her tour dates with The Pretty Reckless for this year and for early 2027 are listed on the band’s official website.
