John Lennon's "Norwegian Wood", which started my train of thought about lyrics he and Paul McCartney wrote for The Beatles, tells a quickly and precisely sketched story (of a one-night stand) in a vivid setting (the woman's apartment with its "Norwegian wood") with humor ("I crawled out to sleep in the bath"), rhetoric (the antimetabole that opens the song), and a twist (the man sets fire to the apartment at the end). Several other superbly developed lyrics exemplify the songwriters' breakthroughs on "Rubber Soul" (1965), including the character sketch of Lennon's "Nowhere Man" and the bilingual humor of McCartney's "Michelle" (along with his "Drive My Car" and "I'm Looking Through You"). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 June 2024)
Footnote: Lennon later said he hated the album closer, his own "Run For Your Life", for its abusive misogyny.
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