Rate the Tracks ! - The Beatles - Rubber Soul

Not an evaluation, just how much I like 'em.

10
Drive My Car
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

9
If I Needed Someone
The Word

8
Girl
Michelle
Think for Yourself

7
Wait
What Goes On
Nowhere Man
I'm Looking Through You
Run for Your Life

4
In My Life
You Won't See Me

 

Drive my Car─8/1O
Norwegian Wood─1O/1O
You Won't see Me─7/1O
Nowhere Man─1O/1O
Think for Yourself─8.5/1O
The Word─8/1O
Michelle─6.5/1O
What Goes On─5.5/1O
Girl─7/1O
I'm Looking Through You─7/1O
In my Life─1O/1O
Wait─8/1O
If I Needed Someone─8.5/1O
Run for Your Life─7/1O


Rubber Soul album
Average rating : 8/1O

 

Really? Run For Your Life not only has zero redeeming qualities, in terms of production, vocals, instrumentation etc. but is so actively offensive that it's worth a 0?
Are you denying any of its qualities because of the lyrics? If so, then I can at least understand (partially) where you're coming from.

 

Wow Rubber Soul getting a workout at the moment lol.... is there a release coming up that I don't know about?

Drive My Car 10/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 10/10
You Won't See Me 6/10
Nowhere Man 10/10
Think For Yourself 5/10
The Word 1/10
Michelle 10/10
What Goes On 7/10
Girl 9/10
I'm Looking Through You 7/10
In My Life 10/10
Wait 6/10
If I Needed Someone 8/10
Run For Your Life 6/10

 

What is it about ' What Goes On ' that so many dislike ?
Ringo's singing ? The lyrics? What?

 

Lol. I was thinking the same.
The Word 1? What's so offensive about The Word??

 

I just really don't like it... it isn't particularly offensive or anything, but it is in my cellar dweller list of Beatles originals

 

Fair enough

 

What blows my mind is how The Beatles went from making a bottom 3 Beatles album for me with Help!, with noticeable lacklustre arrangements, to one of their best albums with some of their best arrangements.

 

Drive My Car 9/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 9/10
You Won't See Me 9/10
Nowhere Man 9/10
Think For Yourself 8/10
The Word 8/10
Michelle 9/10
What Goes On 6/10
Girl 9/10
I'm Looking Through You 9/10
In My Life 10/10
Wait 8/10
If I Needed Someone 9/10
Run For Your Life 4/10

 

My theory is that people probably dislike Run For Your Life mainly because John was so vocal about his own dislike for the song. Truth is it fits in well with the sound of the album. I like it personally, for me it's classic John in stalker mode in the vein of No Reply and I Don't Want To Spoil The Party.

As for What Goes On, it just does not belong on the album. The album's theme and sound just comes to a clattering halt on the first five seconds of the song and it just feels akin to a splinter in your finger.

 

Also, how many graduating videos has "In My Life" been slipped into?

 

I've got splinters in my fingers !

 

No I don't need John Lennon to tell me a song of his sucks. As for What Goes On, I agree it doesn't fit the album but George's solo is pretty killer

 

Interesting take. And I believe that at one time or another in the past, I would have held the same view as it sounds just like me (perhaps as recently as when I was in my late forties ). It may simply be a case of this fan's sort of innate instinct to try and avoid over-playing Beatles material at this later stage of life (I'll be turning sixty this year) such that I find myself liking the better parts of Help! more than I like the better parts of Rubber Soul.
Tracks like 'Help!', 'The Night Before', '
'You’ve got to Hide Your Love Away' , 'I Need You', 'Ticket to Ride', 'I've Just Seen a Face', 'Yesterday', all great tracks.

'You Like me too Much' is a bit pedestrian, though George's vocal is nice sounding, a good effort only too bad the song was not a stronger composition because he was in top singing form there.

Likewise 'Tell me What you See' is a bit lackluster in the writing department as well. Though again a strong vocal performance with great harmonies save even this vaguely dull song from being an outright boring listen.

We can disregard Dizzy Miss Lizzy as John trying to see if he can still do a 'Twist and Shout'-type vocal effort. He did, but somewhat less convincingly than what he was capable of just a year or two earlier. This is the last we'd ever hear him try this.

So I get 7 tracks on Help! that outshine the best of Rubber Soul, which has in answer to these :

Drive my Car
Norwegian Wood
Nowhere Man
Think for Yourself
In My Life
If I Needed Someone

A close match when I examine their merits

 

That's exactly it. I just can't abide the lyrics, no matter how well presented. I do kind of like the song musically, actually, but I just can't give it any positive recognition at all because the lyrics are so hard to take as to destroy any other positive qualities the song may have had.

 

Drive My Car - 7/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) - 10/10
You Won't See Me - 7/10
Nowhere Man - 8/10
Think For Yourself - 7/10
The Word - 9/10
Michelle - 6/10
What Goes On - 4/10
Girl - 8/10
I'm Looking Through You - 8/10
In My Life - 10/10
Wait - 9/10
If I Needed Someone - 8/10
Run For Your Life - 5/10

 

When Rubber Soul goes pure pop, it does it with catchier and more interesting melodies, lyrics, riffs, bass lines and drum parts than anything on Help!. There are about three songs on Help! that have stand-out bass/drum parts, whereas on Rubber Soul, almost every single song has memorable rhythm parts. The only guitar riff on Help! that compares to Drive My Car, Nowhere Man, If I Needed Someone, Run For Your Life, etc. is obviously on the riff driven Ticket to Ride, in my opinion.

When Rubber Soul does ballads, they're served by the organic, warm-yet-crisp production much better than Help!'s strangely muddy sound, even despite the hard panning of the vocals. They also have exotic instrumentation and sounds and tug at the heart strings in ways that the slower songs on Help! (like It's Only Love and You've Got To Hide Your Love Away... Yesterday excluded) could never hope to compare to and with better vocal performances. They have a greater maturity and depth to them both musically and lyrically, I think.

Rubber Soul also has no covers, which is great, because the two on Help! are the two absolute worst the band ever did on a studio album, and The Beatles almost always had better songs than the songs they were covering anyway. It also doesn't have You Like Me Too Much and Tell Me What You See which I agree are weak moments for the band (some of the absolute weakest, I reckon), even if they're decent songs in their own rights imo.

It has no clunky moments like the weak guitar on I Need You, and George's two songs on Rubber Soul, quite frankly, demolish the two he did on Help!. Paul's also at his best both vocally and melodically on any Beatles album here, and John's full venture into ballads are the best of any Beatles album too.

Rubber Soul is an album you can enjoy start to finish with headphones on listening analytically. Help! very much isn't the case in this regard, and outside of its typically ultra catchy melodies, there's nothing much that grabs me in terms of arrangement, and again, the lacklustre production doesn't help there either.

Of course, this is all my opinion. I don't think Rubber Soul and Help! is even a fair comparison because for me the former is just that much better, but Help! is still a fantastic album by any artist's measure from that era, so I can't blame anyone for enjoying it, even if it means they like it more than Rubber Soul! Help! still has its share of interesting moments too, like the superb beat and riff on Ticket to Ride, harmonies on You're Going to Lose That Girl, orchestra on Yesterday and acoustic on I've Just Seen a Face, I just think they're rare in comparisons to Rubber Soul's dozens of memorable moments.

tl;dr The Beatles rule, no matter which way you dice them.

 

Drive My Car 7/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 8/10
You Won't See Me 8.5/10
Nowhere Man 10/10
Think For Yourself 9/10
The Word 8/10
Michelle 8/10
What Goes On 6/10
Girl 7/10
I'm Looking Through You 10/10
In My Life 1/10
Wait 7/10
If I Needed Someone 9/10
Run For Your Life 10/10

 

I do agree with most of what you said here, actually. One of the things that I'm not partial to though is the original stereo version of Help! ~ I now listen exclusively to the mono mix.

As to the writing on much of Help!, they still had one foot in their earlier style and as you point out (minus the exeptions named) the level of sophistication in the song composition has gone up very remarkably overall on Rubber Soul compared to most of the previous album

 

Drive My Car 7/10
Norwegian Wood 10/10
You Won't See Me 7/10
Nowhere Man 9/10
Think For Yourself 6/10
The Word 4/10
Michelle 6/10
What Goes On 6/10
Girl 8/10
I'm Looking Through You 9/10
In My Life 10/10
Wait 6/10
If I Needed Someone 7/10
Run For Your Life 2/10

I think the album as a whole does end up being a better listen than the average song in isolation is.

 

Overplayed? Yes.

But marking this song anything other than 10/10? Hard to make sense of that.

 

Drive My Car - 7/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) - 10/10
You Won't See Me - 6/10
Nowhere Man - 10/10
Think For Yourself - 6/10
The Word - 9/10
Michelle - 7/10
What Goes On - 5/10
Girl - 9/10
I'm Looking Through You - 8/10
In My Life - 10/10
Wait - 7/10
If I Needed Someone - 9/10
Run For Your Life - 6/10

Average 7.8

 

Drive My Car 8/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 10/10
You Won't See Me 9/10
Nowhere Man 9/10
Think For Yourself 3/10
The Word 3/10
Michelle 8/10
What Goes On 4/10
Girl 8/10
I'm Looking Through You 7/10
In My Life 10/10
Wait 3/10
If I Needed Someone 6/10
Run For Your Life 6/10