Is the Beatles Rubber Soul overlooked?

Not overlooked, probably just the opposite; fully explored as a collection of quality songs and found to be an important transitional record for both them and popular music, but with limitations that were done away with on the transformative Revolver.

Never overlook a rubber.

Well, I do confess to liking Revolver better.  And it's certainly transitional, but Revolver has its transitional songs, too, just less of them.


Edited by Slartibartfast - January 21 2012 at 17:47

I think what made Rubber Soul stand out was more adventurous lyrics than they had been doing.

I spent my review of both arguing why Rubber Soul is better, so I won't regurgitate it here.  You can check them out if you want one man's unpopular Beatles opinions.....I understand the huge ratings gap between the two likely means I am wrong.  I accept that. 

I will leave you with one line from the review...

Yeah Revolver has more tricks up it sleeves, but Rubber Soul was the nicer shirt.

You hit on something there David....perhaps I just appreciate the quality "songsmith" approach more than the complexities, at least in Beatle land....that would explain my preference of LiB to Abbey......the former being more blue collar and song-smithy while the latter more elaborate?  Just a thought. 

Anyway, it's all great stuff!

Atavachron wrote: yes, but that was not terribly new in pop music as the Folkies had been doing that for years, and usually much better

Doesn't really matter what influence was, it made a difference.

Great insights guys.

paganinio wrote: Not overlooked. I once thought I didn't listen to Rubber Soul enough, so I listened to it more, and I wish I had listened to Pet Sounds or Abbey Road instead. I tried to "look" into it more, and was tired by it, therefore it can't be overlooked.

You can never get those moments in your life back, man.

It seemed when I first heard "I Don't Want To Spoil the Party" from Beatles For Sale it dawned on me that this new style which was acoustic was developing into what they wrote  later which was Rubber Soul. To an extent songs like "No Reply" and "I'm A Loser" are examples of this change. Early acoustic songs like "Till There Was You" and "This Boy" were based off chord progressions that were used mostly in the 50's. "I'll Be Back" obviously was not. On Rubber Soul with songs like "I'm Looking Through You" and "Girl" it sounded like they had made a huge leap into a different style. Originally on the American release of Rubber Soul it opened with "I've Just Seen A Face" and left quite an impression on American kids who heard it for the first time. Although the song was not meant to appear on the English version of Rubber Soul and instead was found on Help, it fit the style of Rubber Soul. I wasn't fond of the Beatles American "Rock N' Roll" covers except for John Lennon's "Twist and Shout" and "Rock N" Roll Music". But with Rubber Soul's release and the influence it had on all the great writers of that day,,,it would be logical to assume that the Beatles had created a style of their own which involves surpressing their own personal influences and although sometimes incorporating the influences which are not to be indicated by the human ear and in result of this they sound more original to the listener. For example ,,,they might have written a song which had the obvious 1920's Big Band or dixieland style. But it had no reflection on their creative song writing. It was just an addition to their song. "Cry Baby Cry" and 30 others have chord progressions that just don't enter the minds of other great songwriters.   

Edited by TODDLER - January 26 2012 at 18:20