Rate the Tracks ! - The Beatles - Rubber Soul

Ha. I didn’t go quite that low, but honestly, now that I think about it I don’t know why I wouldn’t. But I agree with the poster, it’s not that it’s inherently offensive or anything. I just find it grating and annoying with essentially zero upside. It’s one of those songs I never liked much, but have just increasingly disliked more every year.

I think I just knew that I had to leave room for “Run For Your Life” to be lower without hitting zero because I mildly enjoy the riff leading into the verses.

 

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

 

Drive My Car 7/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 10/10
You Won't See Me 8/10
Nowhere Man 10/10
Think For Yourself 6/10
The Word 7/10
Michelle 9/10

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 7/10
Run For Your Life 6/10

 

Wait should have been left out of the album. A career low

 

I love it. Better than a lot of what's on Help! imo.

 

Drive My Car 6/10
Norwegian Wood 9/10
Won't See Me 6/10
Nowhere Man 10/10
Think For Yourself 8/10
The Word 5/10
Michelle 6/10

What Goes On 3/10
Girl 10/10
Looking Through 6/10
In My Life 9/10
Wait 6/10
Needed Someone 8/10
Run For Life 7/10

 

Run For Your Life is much more intense than either of those songs. It’s also physically threatening.
I don’t think lyrically it fits in at all, only musically. Plenty of people find the lyrics offensive so I don’t think it’s reasonable to group everyone who has issue with the song into people who blindly believe whatever John says.

 

My surprise is at the low scores here for "Michelle," "Think for Yourself" and "What Goes On." There seems to be something a little subjective about this exercise.

 

Well, yes... of course it’s all subjective.

 

Only in the last decade would people possibly have found a way to be offended by this song. Give it a few years and the easily offended people will probably be vandalising the Strawberry Fields gates in protest about this song actually.

 

If anything, I tend to find John Lennon to have been a pretty terrible judge of his own work. This is one of the rare times I agree with him. Dorky, dumb song. And not because I’m offended by it. I love plenty of songs with equally problematic messages. I just think this one happens to be a bad song and woefully out of place.

 

Some people here have suffered from domestic abuse, so you could in the least be respectful of where other people are coming from.
I personally have no issue with it, but on some level I do understand where people are coming from.

 

Always remember that, in many cases, the singles were recorded during the album sessions and meant for the album. They were only removed from the album because of a business decision where they were deemed to be the best songs resulting in higher sales/chart position - it wasn’t an artistic decision. Therefore those songs are rated here as well.

That said, what a great output of songs - only Run for Your Life and What Goes On are sub-par.

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

 

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 7/10
The Word 4/10
Michelle 7/10
What Goes On 6/10
Girl 2/10
I'm Looking Through You 9/10
In My Life 7/10
Wait 7/10
If I Needed Someone 6/10
Run For Your Life 9/10

 

Oh give your head a wobble mate. If people were to deeply analyse the lyrics to every song ever written they'd probably find one reason or another to be offended by the lyrics of 60% of songs, especially modern day song lyrics.

 

Drive My Car 6
Norweigian Wood 10
You Won't See Me 6
Nowhere Man 8
Think For Youself 7
The Word 6
Michelle 7
What Goes On 4
Girl 6
I'm Looking Through You 7
In My Life 8
Wait 5
If I Needed Someone 8
Run For Your Life 8

 

Do what now?
You don’t have to ‘deeply analyse’ the lyrics of Run For Your Life to realise that the narrator plays a psycho. It’s pretty blatant.
I don’t know how you’re not able to at least understand how a song about threatening to kill your girlfriend if she cheats may be a bit uncomfortable for some people. Having a level of sensitivity doesn’t make you a social justice warrior, so don’t be afraid of caring about other people.

 

Yes

 

Drive My Car 9/10
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 10/10
You Won't See Me 9/10
Nowhere Man 19/10
Think For Yourself 9/10
The Word 9/10
Michelle 10/10
What Goes On 7/10
Girl 10/10
I'm Looking Through You 10/10
In My Life 10/10
Wait 7/10
If I Needed Someone 10/10
Run For Your Life 7/10

 

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

I liked Michelle more when I was younger. It and Girl I'm most tempted to skip but often don't, and I basically just end on Harrison's If I Needed Someone to not end on a downer. Got any songs about dying dogs as the closing number, same deal, sorry Old Shep!

So, 'only' two 10/10s... what else would I call a 10/10 Beatles recording? She Said. Eleanor Rigby. Strawberry Fields.

 

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 8/10
The Word 9/10
Michelle 9/10
What Goes On 7/10
Girl 10/10
I'm Looking Through You 10/10
In My Life 9/10
Wait 7810
If I Needed Someone 9/10
Run For Your Life 7/10

 

I rate as follows:
Drive My Car 8/10
Norwegian Wood 10/10
Nowhere Man 10/10
Think For Yourself 9/10
The Word 8/10
Michelle 7/10 (never liked it. Nice melody, nice playing by the band but lyrically not quite as good as I had hoped at the time)
What Goes On 8/10 (lyrically weak but I love the C&W vibe)
Girl 10/10
I’m Looking Through You 10/10
In My Life 10/10
Wait 6/10 (it feels like whst it is a leftover from Help! That needed more work)
If I needed Someone 10/10 (one of George’s best early songs my only complaint is it’s too short)
Run For Your Life 9/10 (lyrically a dark excursion and probably not the best way to end the album but, as the flip side of Michelle, it’s a fascinating & powerful vocal.

 

You have completely ignored the point I put to you.

Do you not acknowledge that a lot of modern song lyrics, and music videos, portray gun violence and sexual misconduct? And here is you surmounting a pursuit against a song written 60 odd years ago by a fella long ago dead.

I admire your morals I really do, but I think you'd be better off recognising and taking your contempt against the message portrayed in modern music that kids today are being fed.

 

‘Run For Your Life”, like any Randy Newman song where he is playing a despicable character as he sings, shines a spotlight on how the character of the song is evil. It’s uncomfortable and should be just as the main narrator in “Red Necks” is nasty. It doesn’t have to make it a favorite or one that everyone loves (and yes, those who have controlling boyfriends/husbands/wives are going to be sensitive to the song) but it is a portrait of a nasty man.

We don’t have to like the ‘narrator’ of the song but it doesn’t diminish the fact that these people are out there.

 

I don't credit it with any kind of subtlety and murder seems plainly implied by the title. Lennon later was very critical of both the lyric and his own behaviour. I don't have a controlling anything thanks, but I was violently assaulted as a child once, so yeah, that would make me find this track shocking on a Beatles record whenever I first heard Run For Your Life in my late teens. I haven't heard too many songs from anyone, outside perhaps some very early blues records, that compares. I take people's word that they read it differently, I hear a threat of murder to a disobedient 'little' female. In Nancy Sinatra's cover it's a 'little boy' she's threatening to run for his life and I doubt I would think anymore kindly of that. Where is a Stones track threatening anybody with murder? I can see Under My Thumb is a reversal of a dynamic in a relationship and the satisfaction of the formerly domineering one's comeuppance. Others are complaints or breaking ups... the warning of Play With Fire is not specifically deadly, just you'll get burned. Wanting to Paint It Black is more about a bad mood than extrenalizing it with bodily harm or death. I'm not saying there is no Stones song this extreme (or how I take this one Beatles song to be). That there is rap or an old blues song as bad doesn't make me like this more, I don't like those either if there is no depth or anything. In another thread I cited Johnny Cash's Deliah's Gone, Lou Reed with the Velvet Underground's There She Goes, and Dino Valenti/Tim Rose/Jimi Hendrix's Hey Joe as songs of a similar extreme that show a lot more ambivalence, irony or shading than this song John Lennon grew out of. The latter can make you think, sensitize the listener, distance from the character that kills or threatens to kill, the former is just a straight-forward threat scenario with no character distance like say Nowhere Man has. It was also the earliest of all the tracks included on the original Rubber Soul album, Lennon said often he didn't think it important at all, and it was stuck on at the very end though the first recorded. He grew out of hitting his wife and saying abusive things to his son and even worked at making up for it as well as owning it. If someone wants to look at the song and think about it great, I want it on there, not cancelled, it was, and it 'is', but for myself I think it's a turkey except as an instrumental maybe, and lots of albums have a turkey or two in them that you almost never want to play.

Norweigan Wood mentioning burning is more in-keeping with the theme of wood. Elvis sings in Play House he'd rather see her dead, but doesn't say run for your life, he says let's play. Skip James says he'd rather be a devil than to be that woman's man.