55. The Beatles - Rubber Soul (1965)

1. Drive My Car

2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

3. You Won't See Me

4. Nowhere Man*

5. Think for Yourself

6. The Word

7. Michelle*

8. What Goes On

9. Girl*

10. I'm Looking Through You

11. In My Life

12. Wait

13. If I Need Someone

14. Run for Your Life

B+

Now don't get me wrong. Musically, this album is brilliant. The Beatles had all (except McCartney, bless him) experimented with LSD, and they were all four of them high as kites on pot. In addition, they had just completed a mind-blowing tour of the USA that saw them meeting Elvis, Dylan and the Byrds, and hearing all sorts of amazing shit on the radio. Add to this an unprecedented opportunity to spend time in the studio, uninterrupted by touring or television commitments, and you have a group primed to risk their reputations on a bold experiment in pop music. Rubber Soul is a thick stew of country, soul, pop and folk that sounded like nothing else when it was released - it's really a watershed moment in pop music.

Unfortunately, the musical experimentation on display can't quite be matched by the lyrics. Yes, this album has the haunting "Nowhere Man", the penetrating "Think for Yourself", and the sombre and reflective "In My Life". It also has "Run for Your Life", which is just about the shittiest, most misogynistic song anyone ever recorded (Lennon is literally threatening to kill a woman if she leaves him). And really, John Lennon does not come off well with this album. Yes, he wrote "Nowhere Man" and the emotionally stark "Girl". He also wrote "Norwegian Wood", which is about a guy burning a woman's flat down because she wouldn't sleep with him, and "The Word", which is not only an annoying song musically but a moronic exhortation to embrace universal love that aims for depth but just highlights how fucking simplistic and ill-conceived the whole hippy venture was to begin with. 

But let's not lay all the blame at the feet of John Lennon. Paul McCartney wrote (or at least, sang) "You Won't See Me", which seems to be about a guy who's angry because a girl he likes won't fuck him. And fair enough, he was young. I know it's a phase I had to grow out of. The difference is that I was never in the world's biggest band, and never released a song on the subject. 

Really, where the fuck do four potheads from Liverpool get off telling me how to live my fucking life?

The rest of the album, however, is great. I particularly like "Michelle", because I am a sucker for McCartney's music hall romps. And "Drive My Car" is kind of stupid, but in a knowing and hilarious way. 

So this album marks a very important moment in pop music, when studio experimentation and the album as artform began to take hold. In many ways, it's one of the most important works of art of the twentieth century. But unfortunately. it's also wildly uneven. It may have blown a lot of minds with its eschewing of the conventions of pop rock, its lyrical ambition, and its grab-bag approach to sonic experimentation (this album has, I think, the first instance of the sitar in rock music, for example). Unfortunately, it's also kind of stupid. The Beatles had done better, and they would do better again. This album is massively important, but not terribly good.