35. The Beatles, "Rubber Soul"

 


Oh ok so now we're getting into the Boomer Canon.  This album, the Beatles' sixth, has fallen from number five - five - on this list in 2012 to 35th now, as the voter pool expanded beyond guys who stopped listening to popular music in 1986.  The album didn't get any worse; it's still a great album, but I posit that the broadening of the voter pool has resulted in a more interesting and varied list than we've ever been given in the past (despite a few startling omissions, about which more when the actual list is done).  I will tell you that I have three Beatles albums on my personal Top 100, but this is not one of them.

There are entire books about this album so I don't have a lot of new insight, but what I've always found the most insightful take was that if the prior Beatles albums (well, groups of songs, this might be the first coherent "album" qua album) were all about puppy love and holding your hand and unrequited love, this was the first album to show that love could also be painful and damaging and hurtful.  The very first song, "Drive My Car," initially scans as a silly little offer - you can drive my car - but is actually about a girl who wants to to use the singer as a chauffeur and lover combo.  A little bit darker, but we're just scratching the surface here.  "Norwegian Wood," the very next song, is about a girl who turns John Lennon down and so he does the natural thing and burns her fucking house down.  Psychotic!

So at this point the lads had already undergone Beatlemania and Bob Dylan and marijuana and LSD and Indian music and it all shows up here.  Oh, and the Byrds.  The Byrds has already borrowed guitar sounds from the Beatles and on this record, on songs like "If I Needed Someone," the Beatles borrowed it right back.  Written by George Harrison and later successfully covered by the Hollies, "Someone" is another bummer lyrically, basically "if I needed a side piece, you'd be it for sure."  But that's nothing compared to the song that comes next, "Run for Your Life:"

Well I'd rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or I won't know where I am

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end, little girl

That first couplet was lifted from an early Elvis Presley song, "Baby Let's Play House," and that would be enough but Lennon really ran with the idea.  (The song was barred on some radio stations due to its content.)

It's not all doom and gloom!  There's "Michelle," one of the most famous Beatles song, a sweet little Paul McCartney love ballad with the famous French paasage "Sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble/Très bien ensemble" ("These are words that go very well together").  As Greil Marcus has said, "Michelle" probably paid the bills for years.  Even Ringo gets a chance to sing on the country-pop "What Goes On," with great harmonies by John and Paul.  It's an easygoing confection that got shat on for that very reason.

I cannot end this without talking about "Girl," Lennon's melancholy response to "Michelle" that features the very strange effect of John sucking air in after the first line of the chorus, which, it has been suggested, is supposed to sound like taking a drag on a joint.  I guess?  It's a pretty song, regardless.  

So yeah there are a bunch of great songs on this album and there's not a lot new I can say at this point.  If you like the Beatles, you'll like it.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.

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