Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) |
"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is a song by The
Beatles from the Rubber Soul album. It is significant as one of the first Western pop songs with an
Indian musical instrument - John Lennon's guitar is accompanied by George Harrison on the sitar. The song is a lilting acoustic ballad featuring Lennon's lead vocal and signature Beatle
harmonies on the middle eight section.
The lyrics of the song sketch an encounter between the singer and an unnamed girl (or "bird" in British slang); as the pair
drink wine and talk into the night the singer rebuffs the girl's romantic advances, eventually leaving to "sleep in the bath".
The following morning, the singer finds himself alone.
The exact meaning of the title "Norwegian Wood" remains a mystery. The name of the song is mentioned in the first verse ("She
showed me her room / Isn't it good? / Norwegian wood?") and again in its last line ("So, I lit a fire / Isn't it good? /
Norwegian wood?"). Some say that "Norwegian Wood" may be a pun with a nickname of a strong variety of marijuana. Others claim the final line of the song implies that the singer burned the home of the girl
using the furniture as fuel, or burned the girl's furniture in the fireplace. There was also high regard for furniture made of real Norwegian wood, that is, wood from Norway, at the time The Beatles wrote the song.
As the second song on the Rubber Soul album (following the more conventional "I've Just Seen a
Face" on the US release or "Drive
My Car" on the UK version), the exotic instrumentation and oblique lyric represented one of the first indications to fans of
the expanding musical vocabulary and experimental approach that the group was rapidly adopting.
John Lennon had acknowledged being strongly influenced by Bob Dylan during
this time period, and the rather opaque lyrics of the song may have reflected this. Dylan may have felt he was being mocked and
responded to the song with a similar tune, "4th Time Around", which has a similar melody and a similar subject and is sometimes considered a parody of "Norwegian Wood".
Norwegian Wood is also an annual music festival in Oslo, Norway, and the name of a novel by Haruki Murakami.
This article is a stub. You can
help Wikipedia by expanding it
.
External links
|