It’s the debate that divides a million Beatle fans, what is their greatest song, their towering achievement, and what composition deserves to stand out above all others?

It is subjective, of course, this is a band, ‘the’ band with a catalogue of hundreds of songs to choose from and a fanbase that spans six decades, the choices and the debates are almost endless, but for me there is only one song that can stake the claim to be their best, and that is ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

Yes, it is arguable that the Beatles were at their best as a rocking little band fresh off the boat from Hamburg and those early songs captured a mood and stirring in society, so surely it should be ones of those that comes out on top, but it is hard to ignore that Strawberry Fields, is the biggest marker there was of how far the Beatles had travelled in that short time.

From ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please, Please Me’ to ‘Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see’ is a lyrical journey that most bands could never dream of, but the Beatles did it just four years.

In that sense, Lennon’s Strawberry Fields perhaps signifies the apex of the Beatles growth, from basement band to kings of psychedelia and back again, with the Sgt Pepper era the “toppermost of the poppermost” before a retreat back into the basics and stripped back sound that defined their early years and highlighted their need to fall back in love with music, and each other again.

For that reason alone it should be celebrated.

With the shackles off and the studio and the genius of George Martin at their disposal, Strawberry Fields is the Beatles at their most inventive. From the use of a Mellotron to add a dreamlike quality to the merging of two different takes recorded in different keys and tempos, nothing was off the table in the quest to make this song live up to its themes of memory, nostalgia and introspection.

On paper, the song reads like a dream and in its production, it loses none of that promise, even today it feels like we are getting to walk around in John’s mind and he is ‘taking us down’, leading us by the hand into his own hazy trip, for me it makes the song and endless fascination, and a song that I come back to again and again, each time with a slightly different interpretation of John’s lyrics and intent – in that way, Strawberry Fields is the gift that keeps giving.

What baffles me to this day and always will is that Strawberry Fields and its b-side, Penny Lane, never made it onto Sgt Pepper. Their inclusion on the album would undoubtedly make it even stronger and more era-defining than it already was and perhaps would have elevated Lennon’s masterpiece higher up more people’s ‘best of’ lists.

But perhaps it not being on that album makes it more of a joy to discover, be it in its inclusion of the muddled but still brilliant, ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ or on the Beatles ‘1’ compilation or our own Spotify playlists, Strawberry Fields is always a welcome discovery and one of the only songs that makes me stop what I am doing, sit down and listen.

Ok, it might not be everyone’s bag and you might disagree but that is the beauty of music, we get to have our favourites, and that’s nothing to get hung about!