I also felt that For No One should have been in the poll and I didn’t get why Nowhere Man was there at all, it just doesn’t seem all that sad to me. But I do agree wholeheartedly that Norwegian Wood belongs in the list.
That’s seven write-in votes for For No One. To me, Nowhere Man belongs because it’s about alienation, and it has that lyric “making all his nowhere plans for nobody,” which is one of my favorite lines in the song. The poll choices are subjective, though. Thanks for agreeing on the inclusion of Norwegian Wood.
Here’s a little something for my fellow fans of For No One. It’s a solo version from 1984ish. Paul sounds ethereally lovely here, very vulnerable. And it’s interspersed with the humor of his doing the french horn solo himself.
Albert Goldman (who I know was often full of BS) gave what I thought a good interpretation of the story. He claimed that ‘Norwegian Wood’ was a decorating style, like ‘Danish Modern’. The woman had asked, “isn’t it good”, in other words, “You like how my apartment is done up?”
Goldman claimed that Lennon *did *sleep with the woman (but that in 1965, admitting to adultery outright would not have been acceptable to the stodgy record label owner Sir Joseph Lockwood ) so Lennon made up the part about sleeping in the bath.
But unchanged was the fact that when he woke up, the woman had gone off to work.
The refrain of, “isn’t it good?” was Lennon’s reflection in front of the fireplace on how much more comfortable he felt amid the then-new sex roles, where women could be independent, with their own jobs and apartments. This was understandable given that he was raised by a single mother, and later a single aunt.
And, absolutely one of the most beautiful sad melodies ever, by Lennon or anyone else.
Another vote for For No One.
For No One - eight votes
I had missed Reality Chuck’s claim that in Norwegian Wood the singer didn’t sleep with the woman. My take on that song is closer to the version offered by F.U. Shakespeare. “We talked until two, and then she said, ‘it’s time for bed,’” - to me, that means they slept together. But then afterwards she tried to send him home because she had to work in the morning, and laughed that he wanted to stay the night. He slept in the bath (I always assumed this meant he was drunk and didn’t want to go home). I always thought the song was so haunting and wistful because he wanted that woman more than she wanted him, and the whole idea of burning her house down was really a metaphor.
I voted for several songs, including “Let It Be,” but I wanted to stress that I’m only referring to the “Naked” version. The original sucks.
The final line of A Day in the Life is rather haunting and then the crescendo at the end just completes it