The Beatles - Rubber Soul (1965)

The Beatles had become famous by 1965 for songs about boy-girl relationships that mostly did not reflect their own feelings.  Rubber Soul was the first step away from "writing swimming pools," as John Lennon and Paul McCartney called songs that would make each of them enough money to buy one.  Indeed, by the late fall of 1965, the fabulous foursome were materially comfortable and well-established to the point where they were not afraid to say what was in their hearts.

Rubber Soul found the Beatles pondering relationships in a deeper way, with many songs expressing discontentment with a partner's attitudes or trying to understand her.  The lyrics took on a more intimate tone, while the music was more low-key, full of acoustic guitars with heavy treble and disturbing electric textures bubbling up to the surface.  "Drive My Car," which begins the album, tells the tale of a would-be starlet who hires a young man to be her driver before she's even found a car, though her intentions have little to do with automobiles. More often than not, the Beatles' protagonists find themselves hurt by inattention from their lovers, from the frustrated narrator of "You Won't See Me" trying to connect with his lady, while the rockabilly-inspired "What Goes On," with a gently soulful vocal from Ringo Starr (a Lennon-McCartney-Starkey song, marking Ringo's baby steps into songwriting), depicts a young man taking the initiative to confront the girl who's breaking his heart, and doing so with as much intensity.  Love is so frustrating to the Beatles that they imagine revenge on women who toy with their emotions, from the vengeful arson fantasy in "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" to the angry put-downs in "I'm Looking Through You."

The songs on Rubber Soul express a tolerance for romantic pain, with the Beatles acknowledging their own fallibility and mistakes and looking at love as a complex emotion that takes on various forms.  John would rather deal with the disappointments of romance than not bother with it at all, as "Girl" demonstrates, and his acknowledgement of all of the people and places that have meant so much to him in the past, which he expresses so beautifully in "In My Life," shows a growing maturity in dealing with romance.  George Harrison balances anger with violated trust ("Think For Yourself," which is more about humanity in general than romantic entanglements) with a need to offer hope and carefully avoid promises that can't be kept ("If I Needed Someone," an apology to a girl who fancies him without knowing he's already spoken for).  In spite of everything, it all comes down to satisfying the heart - "The Word" is love.  The more sophisticated music, incorporating organ solos, electrified folk chords, baroque piano, and, on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," an Indian sitar, carries that message with astonishing fluidity.

The Beatles are still hopelessly romantic - Paul's gentle "Michelle" is one of the sweetest valentines he's ever written - but "Nowhere Man," the one song on Rubber Soul specifically not about boy-girl relationships, reveals a greater desire for personal meaning to their own lives and to the outside world. What is a man if he should gain the world, and lose his sense of being, not knowing where he's going or where he's been?  By December 1965, when Rubber Soul was released, the Beatles had their swimming pools.  But with Rubber Soul, they created a vivid landscape of rich music and personal, introspective visions that invited the listener to explore something a little deeper.