Girl (Beatles song)

"Girl" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written by John Lennon[2][3] and credited to Lennon–McCartney. "Girl" was the last complete song recorded for that album.[4][5] "Girl" is one of the most melancholic and complex of the Beatles' earlier love songs.[6]

"Girl"
Picture sleeve for the 1966 Italian single release
Song by the Beatles
from the album Rubber Soul
Released3 December 1965
Recorded11 November 1965
StudioEMI, London
GenreFolk rock[1]
Length2:32
LabelParlophone
Songwriter(s)Lennon–McCartney
Producer(s)George Martin

Composition

The song's instrumentation has specific similarities to Greek music, as with "And I Love Her" and "Michelle".[6] As for the inspiration of the song's lyrics, Lennon stated that the "girl" was an archetype he had been searching for and would finally find in Yoko Ono.[7] He said: "'Girl' is real. There is no such thing as the girl, she was a dream, but the words are all right. It wasn't just a song, and it was about that girl – that turned out to be Yoko, in the end – the one that a lot of us were looking for."[8][9] In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine in 1980, Lennon said of his song "Woman": "Reminds me of a Beatles track, but I wasn't trying to make it sound like that. I did it as I did 'Girl' many years ago. So this is the grown-up version of 'Girl'."[10]

McCartney claimed that he contributed the lines "Was she told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure" and "That a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure."[3] However, in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon explained that he wrote these lines as a comment on Christianity, which he was "opposed to at the time". Lennon said: "I was just talking about Christianity, in that – a thing like you have to be tortured to attain heaven ... – be tortured and then it'll be alright, which seems to be a bit true but not in their concept of it. But I didn't believe in that, that you have to be tortured to attain anything, it just so happens that you were".[11]

Recording

Author Ian MacDonald describes "Girl" as "Lennon's answer to McCartney's 'Michelle': another Euro-song, replacing his partner's suave mock-French with a decadent German two-step crossed with Mikis Theodorakis's music for Zorba the Greek".[5] Performed by Lennon and George Harrison, the acoustic guitars on the track were played with capos, lending an extra brightness to their sound. Musicologist Walter Everett comments that one of Harrison's guitar parts has the capo positioned so high up the neck and is played by him in a manner that creates a "nasal, sitar-like 'bouzouki' sound".[12]

Lennon's lead vocals were initially overdubbed and featured a characteristic unheard before on a Beatles song. In McCartney's description: "My main memory is that John wanted to hear the breathing, wanted it to be very intimate, so George Martin put a special compressor on the voice, then John dubbed it. … I remember John saying to the engineer (Norman Smith) when we did 'Girl,' that when he draws his breath in, he wants to hear it." Following the Beatles' request, the engineer added more treble to the vocal, which, in Everett's description, matches the sound and timbre of the brushed cymbal played by Ringo Starr.[13] In the song's middle eight sections, McCartney and Harrison sing the word "tit" repeatedly as vocal harmony. McCartney stated that this part of the vocal arrangement was influenced by the Beach Boys. He recalled: "The Beach Boys had a song out where they'd done 'la la la' and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it, but not use the same phrase."[14]

Cancelled 1977 single release

In early 1966, "Girl" was issued as the B-side of "Michelle" in several European countries. It was also released as the A-side of a single in Italy, backed by "Nowhere Man".

In November 1977, Capitol Records scheduled the United States release of "Girl" backed with "You're Going to Lose That Girl" as a single (Capitol 4506) to accompany the release of Love Songs, a Beatles' compilation album that contains both of these songs. However, the single was cancelled before it was issued. Promotional copies, which featured "Girl" on both sides—one in stereo, the other mono, along with a picture sleeve, were issued. (All copies of this promotional single were pressed on black vinyl.)

Personnel

According to Ian MacDonald, except as noted:[5]

Cover versions
gollark: They're the qualification before those.
gollark: I read it before then, but still. English at school is very evil that way.
gollark: 1984 is actually part of the English GCSE course at my school (and/or exam board or whatever, not sure how that works). It's amazing how picking apart random bits of phrasing or whatever for hours on end ruin your enjoyment of a work.
gollark: Vaguely relatedly I think 1984 is entering the public domain next year. Copyright lasts for an excessively long time in my opinion.
gollark: Okay, but if you're talking about real-world examples I don't see why it's remotely relevant to say that the author of a book vaguely relating to those real-world examples believed X.

References
  1. Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian David (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. Simon and Schuster. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-74320-169-8.
  2. Sheff 2000, p. 197.
  3. Miles 1997, pp. 275–76.
  4. Lewisohn 1988, p. 68.
  5. MacDonald 2005, p. 181.
  6. Unterberger, Richie. ""Girl" – The Beatles". AllMusic. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
  7. "62 - 'Girl'". 100 Greatest Beatles Songs. Rolling Stone. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
  8. Ryan, Kevin (2006). Recording The Beatles. Houston, Texas: Curvebending Publishing. p. 404. ISBN 978-0-9785200-0-7.
  9. https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/girl/
  10. Cott 1980.
  11. http://www.beatlesbible.com/people/john-lennon/songs/god/
  12. Everett 2001, p. 333.
  13. Everett 2001, pp. 333–34.
  14. Kruth 2015, p. 192.
  15. Roberts 2006, p. 479.

Bibliography
  • Cott, Jonathan (5 December 1980). "Rolling Stone Interview with John Lennon". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 27 October 2006.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Hertsgaard, Mark (1995). A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of The Beatles. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 0-385-31377-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kruth, John (2015). This Bird Has Flown: The Enduring Beauty of Rubber Soul Fifty Years On. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-1617135736.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Lewisohn, Mark (1988). The Beatles Recording Sessions. New York: Harmony Books. ISBN 0-517-57066-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • MacDonald, Ian (2005). Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (Second Revised ed.). London: Pimlico (Rand). ISBN 1-84413-828-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-5249-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Sheff, David (2000). All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-25464-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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