The Beatles had listeners hanging on every word that they sang during the 60s. That gave them the license to explore many different forms of songwriting techniques. Story songs started to pop up on their albums here and there.
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These four songs pretty much take us from beginning to end when it comes to the stories within the lyrics. They prove that, among their many other impressive qualities, the Fab Four could spin an effective yarn.
“I Saw Her Standing There”
When George Martin used the term “potboiler” when it came to the song “I Saw Her Standing There”, he was referring to its ability to immediately grab listeners’ attention. That’s what made it such a great choice to lead off the band’s first UK album, Please Please Me. Over the years, that term has come to mean many different things, including a story that keeps people on the edge of their seats. It all applies here. Note how Paul McCartney, the song’s primary writer, sets the setting (a dance) and the dilemma (the narrator’s chances of getting to know the girl who captivates him) in a heartbeat. Over the course of three short verses and a middle eight, they go from complete strangers to going steady.
“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”
This song represented a major step forward in The Beatles’ artistic development in a lot of ways. First, the candor of the adult subject matter left the innocent themes of past Fab Four hits behind. On top of that, John Lennon parcels out only minimal bits of exposition, allowing his audience to connect the dots. To top it all off, he achieves a kind of Chekhov’s gun effect when the girl mentions the style of décor in her apartment bedroom. When you first hear it, you wonder why this detail is important. But then it makes sense when Lennon hints that the narrator decided to burn down the flat when the girl leaves the next morning. In that respect, it also becomes the first Fab Four song with a twist ending.
“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”
The White Album gave The Beatles license to try all different types of things, since they had so much space to occupy. If you asked the other members of the group besides Paul McCartney, they likely would have told you that they tried way too hard to finesse “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” into something special. After attempting several different arrangements, they went with a slightly reggae feel. The story, meanwhile, isn’t all that dissimilar from the boy-meets-girl, boy-wins girl tale at the heart of “I Saw Her Standing There”. One difference this time is that we see the couple all the way to domestic bliss. That even includes a role reversal between the pair. McCartney accidentally mixed up the lyrics during recording, then decided to keep it that way for an unexpected twist.
“Rocky Raccoon”
Like many other British acts, The Beatles saw American country music as a slightly funny thing. As a result, their own efforts to interpret the genre skirted parody. And that wasn’t such a bad thing on “Rocky Raccoon”, because Paul McCartney creates a Western tale that balances out its tragic aspects with a healthy dose of humor. For example, there’s the slapstick moment where the drunken doctor lies on the table instead of the wounded hero. The cartoon-like name that Macca gave to the main character clues us in that we shouldn’t take this too seriously. And yet his writing skill manages to rope us into the story anyway, so much so that we’re genuinely sorrowful for Rocky’s undoing.
Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
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