A Day in the Life" is the one.

The line “He blew his mind out in a car” came straight from a newspaper article about a car crash death. John Lennon read about Tara Browne, a Guinness heir, who died in 1966 when his Lotus Elan crashed. The article mentioned he didn’t notice the traffic lights had changed, and Lennon turned that into lyrics.

It’s not the only newspaper reference in the song — the “4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire” comes from a separate news item about potholes. But the car crash is the most famous.

That mix of real tragedy and surreal detail is what makes it so haunting. Lennon himself said later he was just stringing together disconnected observations. But the crash part was real.