Serious Contenders: Beatles, "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"

In slightly belated honor of John Lennon's birthday, but also because Fall always brings me back to this song.

As I've said before, when you're dealing with the Beatles, a very special definition has to be applied to "underrated." Pretty much every crumb of the Beatles' discography has been lauded by someone or other, and the few bits that are overlooked are deservedly so. The Rubber Soul period is generally considered a high point, but also as the border between the early pop songs and the later art-psychedelia, sometimes falls behind a bit. Nobody is going to forget it was a great album, but it's also easy to forget in light of what came after. The Beatles were constantly, rapidly mutating, especially after Help, so this is both a creative highwater mark (at the time) and a transitional period. Not a lot of bands have such moments combined as one. There's a lot going on on that record.

I personally have a soft spot for Rubber Soul-era Beatles. Abbey Road may be my favourite album but Rubber Soul is the one I feel can take me back to a specific time and place. There was one fall in high school, grade 10, where I listened to these tracks incessantly. I was just getting my legs as someone who had opinions about music, and these songs really opened my taste up a bit. Especially this one. There's something so warm and welcoming about that acoustic strum and that twanging sitar. And it melds so perfectly with Lennon's lyrical story, where he seems just to be lying back and unloading, pontificating, extemporizing: "I once had a girl / Or should I say she once had me?" Great opening line and the rest of the song doesn't let down. Lennon apes Dylan, admittedly, shoving off choruses for refrains, and it works, because he's got a narrative to tell, and it's a damn good one. The song is as warm yet off-kilter as a song about attempted seduction and arson ought to be.