RUBBER SOUL

Then everything changed. After five pop-oriented LPs, the early sound was starting to get a little old, and since The Beatles were popular enough so that anything they wrote would go straight to #1, they decided to experiment just a little. As a result, many of the songs off this record feel more satisfying and wholesome than the tracks off the earlier records. Also, there appears to have been new technology to record this album, as it sounds far clearer than the earlier records.

The first songs to note are Michelle and In My Life, both of which are infinitely more mature than any song The Beatles had written before. Girl is also a fantastic song with very meaningful lyrics, and ones that I can sadly relate to! Norwegian Wood is now a classic song, with it's cryptic lyrics and the use of sitar. Nowhere Man shows the more psychedelic side of The Beatles, although it's still in its infancy here. I particularly like the heavy sound of Think For Yourself. The Word has a very similar theme to Yes's Time And A Word, and probably inspired it. I'm Looking Through You is an amazing song with great lyrics and a wonderful memorable melody. Run For Your Life has some of the most horrible lyrics of any Beatles track: the lyrics start with 'Well I'd rather see you dead, little girl than to be with another man' and just get worse from there on! According to John Lennon, this was the song he most regretted writing.

While The Beatles had already proved themselves as a brilliant pop group, it was with Rubber Soul that they started to secure their place as one of the best bands of all time. This is an extremely important album, for The Beatles and for rock music in general. The music here is fabulous, but the best was yet to come!