“Penny Lane” was released in 1967 as a double A side single with “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The chorus for the song included these lines:

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

See the official promo video featuring the Beatles here:

While the Beatles did not grow up in a prototypical American suburb, they did grow up outside the city center of Liverpool. Here is how Paul McCartney described it:

A lot of our formative years were spent walking around those places. Penny Lane was the depot I had to change buses at to get from my house to John’s and to a lot of my friends. It was a big bus terminal which we all knew very well. I sang in the choir at St Barnabas Church opposite.

John Lennon made a similar statement:

The bank was there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just reliving childhood.

The Beatles were not immune from writing about everyday subjects: on their previous album Revolver, the first three songs revolved around mundane topics like paying taxes, lonely women, and sleeping too much. This song combines mundane life – a place with a bus terminus – with childhood nostalgia. This location is far from the Beatles’ urban (Liverpool, Hamburg, London, New York City, other major cities) and country (estates, getaways) lives with which they would become associated.

While they probably did not intend to do so, the song hints at the postwar existence of many in the English speaking world: suburban-like neighborhoods with single-family homes, relatively safe streets, working class to upper-middle class residents, and a steady life revolving around family drama, school, and happenings in the neighborhood. Including the forming of bands with kids around your age who share some of your interests and are also trying to be cool.