Album: Rubber Soul
Artist: The Beatles
Born: Liverpool
Released: December 1965
Genre: Folk Rock
Influenced: The Beach Boys, Blur, Pulp, The Verve, Oasis
After crying for help and putting themselves up for sale, the Beatles finally found the new direction they were seeking with Rubber Soul. I had a listen again to the two previous albums to see what clues there were to how the group evolved out of its Merseybeat phase, but Rubber Soul really was a quantum leap. On Beatles For Sale, there were signs of maturity in Lennon's songwriting with the darker themes of I'm A Loser and No Reply, but what makes Rubber Soul such an outstanding album is that the whole group were firing creatively. The folk rock influence of Bob Dylan and the Byrds is plain to see, but the Beatles managed to develop the sound in their own distinctive way.
With no Spotify playlist to add, instead I'll just write about my three favourite songs on the album, starting with Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). This is often wrongly credited with being the first pop song to feature a sitar; the real pioneer in bringing Middle Eastern sounds and guitar tunings to folk was Davy Graham and the Kinks also got their first with See My Friends, but The Beatles did popularise and develop this sound like no other. Written by Lennon, this song blew my mind when I first heard it as a young teenager; I always saw it as a psychedelic masterpiece, until I found out it was about a sordid love affair (puts a new emphasis on "this bird has flown"!). If anything, this knowledge only served to improve my appreciation of the song.
George Harrison also begins to star on this album, notably on Think For Yourself, which has a great fuzzy bass guitar sound and explores new territory for the band, moving away from songs about teenage love into social comment. I've always seen the three-line refrain, "You're telling all those lies / About the good things that we can have / If we close our eyes", to be the first open drug reference in a Beatles song, imploring listeners to roll up a spliff and expand their horizons.
My final pick is the supreme In My Life, another song penned by Lennon, easily one of my favourite Beatles songs ever recorded. Like most tracks on the album, it clocks in at just over 2mins. Pop perfection. My only criticism is that it's not long enough. This was the first explicitly autobiographical song recorded by the Beatles, infused with Lennon's nostalgia for his childhood in Liverpool, and was a huge creative leap forward for Lennon and the band. Lennon openly cites Dylan as his influence on In My Life, not just from their time together in New York in the summer of '65, but because listening to his work pushed him to write more personal songs and drop the "throwaway" pop.
Artist: The Beatles
Born: Liverpool
Released: December 1965
Genre: Folk Rock
Influenced: The Beach Boys, Blur, Pulp, The Verve, Oasis
After crying for help and putting themselves up for sale, the Beatles finally found the new direction they were seeking with Rubber Soul. I had a listen again to the two previous albums to see what clues there were to how the group evolved out of its Merseybeat phase, but Rubber Soul really was a quantum leap. On Beatles For Sale, there were signs of maturity in Lennon's songwriting with the darker themes of I'm A Loser and No Reply, but what makes Rubber Soul such an outstanding album is that the whole group were firing creatively. The folk rock influence of Bob Dylan and the Byrds is plain to see, but the Beatles managed to develop the sound in their own distinctive way.
With no Spotify playlist to add, instead I'll just write about my three favourite songs on the album, starting with Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). This is often wrongly credited with being the first pop song to feature a sitar; the real pioneer in bringing Middle Eastern sounds and guitar tunings to folk was Davy Graham and the Kinks also got their first with See My Friends, but The Beatles did popularise and develop this sound like no other. Written by Lennon, this song blew my mind when I first heard it as a young teenager; I always saw it as a psychedelic masterpiece, until I found out it was about a sordid love affair (puts a new emphasis on "this bird has flown"!). If anything, this knowledge only served to improve my appreciation of the song.
George Harrison also begins to star on this album, notably on Think For Yourself, which has a great fuzzy bass guitar sound and explores new territory for the band, moving away from songs about teenage love into social comment. I've always seen the three-line refrain, "You're telling all those lies / About the good things that we can have / If we close our eyes", to be the first open drug reference in a Beatles song, imploring listeners to roll up a spliff and expand their horizons.
My final pick is the supreme In My Life, another song penned by Lennon, easily one of my favourite Beatles songs ever recorded. Like most tracks on the album, it clocks in at just over 2mins. Pop perfection. My only criticism is that it's not long enough. This was the first explicitly autobiographical song recorded by the Beatles, infused with Lennon's nostalgia for his childhood in Liverpool, and was a huge creative leap forward for Lennon and the band. Lennon openly cites Dylan as his influence on In My Life, not just from their time together in New York in the summer of '65, but because listening to his work pushed him to write more personal songs and drop the "throwaway" pop.
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