“Norwegian Wood” by Beatles

“Norwegian Wood” is a great Beatles song off their wonderful album Rubber Soul from 1965. The song, written by Lennon and McCartney, makes use of guitar, lead and harmony vocal, bass guitar, and sitar, played by George Harrison. This song is interesting because it has five verses, all with a similar melody, but the first verse is major, the second minor, and so on. The other interesting thing is that it could either be in a fast three or six-four or it might actually be in a compound meter, probably a slow six or three-eight. I feel division of each note into three parts and by listening to the bass line I guess I would have to call it six-eight. The beginning has four measures of guitar that seems to foreshadow the melody, sol-la-sol-fa-mi-re-fa-mi-do-ti-re-ti-sol. The sitar joins in with the same melody for the fifth measure and then continues to play some different stuff for the rest of the song. The first, third, and fifth verses all use the same melody that I explained from the introduction. The second verse uses the minor chord and the melody changes to something beginning on me instead of mi obviously since its minor not major. The song lacks too many cliché chord progressions, but there is definitely some I to IV motion that you can hear in all of the verses.
I like the song because of the sitar. The sitar sound brought a whole new element to Beatles music and made it even more innovative for the time. I like Norwegian Wood because of its different sound. All of the songs on Rubber Soul are slightly out there, but this song sticks out the most too me.