The Word

From Wikipedia:

“The Word” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded with Lennon on lead vocals. It was first released on their 1965 album Rubber Soul.

Background and inspiration

John Lennon had felt during his youth that “love had been the answer”, and had written “The Word” as his “first expression” of the concept. He had felt that love was an “underlying theme of the universe”, and that love was fundamental in many things, which had inspired the lyric “In the good and bad books that I have read”. The song is credited to Lennon–McCartney; however, Lennon had stated that it was “mainly mine”. It had marked the first time the Beatles had written a song about love as a concept, which would become important in the band’s later work.

Composition

Musically, the song is founded on a driving funk beat, with few chord changes and a simple melody in the key of D major. (The refrain is a 12-bar blues in D. The main chord is D7(♯9), also used in “Drive My Car” and “Taxman“.)

Paul McCartney said of this song, “John and I would like to do songs with just one note like ‘Long Tall Sally‘. We get near it in ‘The Word'”.

Reception

In his review for the 50th anniversary of Rubber Soul, Jacob Albano of Classic Rock Review writes that “The Word” is the first song on its parent album not to be “absolutely excellent,” calling the harmonies “a bit too forced.” However, Albano still considered the song “entertaining”, and complimented the “piano backdrop” and Starr’s drum performance. Far Out‘s Jack Whatley and Tyler Golsen had both considered the song to be an important song for the Beatles and had been considered to be a part of their transition from creating pop songs to psychedelic-influenced songs. […]

In July 2018, a statistical analysis concluded that Paul was very likely the principal contributor to the writing of The Word. The same study also found that “In My Life” was almost certainly written entirely by John —contradicting Paul’s longstanding claim of involvement:

Mark Glickman, senior lecturer in statistics at Harvard University, and Jason Brown, Professor of Mathematics at Dalhousie University, created a computer model which broke down Lennon and McCartney songs into 149 different components to determine the musical fingerprints of each songwriter.

[…] “We wondered whether you could use data analysis techniques to try to figure out what was going on in the song to distinguish whether it was by one or the other,” said Dr Glickman. “The basic idea is to convert a song into a set of different data structures that are amenable for establishing a signature of a song using a quantitative approach. Think of decomposing a colour into its constituent components of red, green and blue with different weights attached. The probability that ‘In My Life’ was written by McCartney is .018. Which basically means it’s pretty convincingly a Lennon song. McCartney misremembers.”

[…] For the study researchers ‘decomposed’ Beatles’ songs written between 1962 and 1966, analysing features such as frequency of chords, chord transitions, melodic notes and pitch. They found a major distinction. While the pitch of Sir Paul’s songs was complex and varied, Lennon’s did not change much at all.

“Consider the Lennon song, ‘Help!’” added Dr Glickman. “It basically goes, ‘When I was younger, so much younger than today,’ where the pitch doesn’t change very much. It stays at the same note repeatedly, and only changes in short steps. Whereas with Paul McCartney, you take a song like ‘Michelle.’’ In terms of pitch, it’s all over the place.“

However, although Sir Paul has lost the attribution of one song, it appears he has gained another. The song “The Word,” from the same album, which is attributed to Lennon, is almost certainly by McCartney, the researchers have concluded. A spokesman for Sir Paul McCartney said the singer would not be responding to the study.

From Sir Paul McCartney ‘misremembers’ writing ‘In My Life’ – it was really John Lennon, says Harvard analysis, The Telegraph, July 29, 2018

John and I would like to do songs with just one note — the hardest things of all to write. You know what people used to say about abstract painting — that it was done by chimpanzees? Well, we used to think that about songs that weren’t melodic. But melodic songs are in fact quite easy to write. To write a good song with just one note in it — like Long Tall Sally — is really very hard. It’s the kind of thing we’ve wanted to do for some time. We get near it in The Word. That’s a number on our new LP — another example of being bored by doing the same thing. This could be a Salvation Army song. The word is love, but it could be Jesus (it isn’t, mind you, but it could be). ‘It’s so fine, it’s sunshine, it’s the word’. It’s about nothing really, but it’s about love. It’s much more original than our old stuff, less obvious. ‘Give the word a chance to say That the word is just the way’ — and the organ comes in, just like the Sally Army.

Paul McCartney – From interview for London Life, December 4, 1965

We started putting out messages like ‘The word is love’, and things like that. And when you start putting out messages, people start asking you, ‘What’s the message?’ It’s love. It’s the marijuana period. It’s the love and peace thing. The Word is love.

John Lennon – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

From The Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations:

• [a] mono 11 Nov 1965.
  UK: Parlophone PMC 1267 Rubber Soul 1965.
  US: Capitol T 2442 Rubber Soul 1965.
• [b] stereo 11 Nov 1965.
  US: Capitol ST 2442 Rubber Soul 1965.
• [c] stereo 15 Nov 1965.
  UK: Parlophone PCS 3075 Rubber Soul 1965.
• [d] stereo 1987.
  CD: EMI CDP 7 46440 2 Rubber Soul 1987.

[b] must be the rejected Nov 11 mix: not only does it not sound as good, but surely Parlophone uses the correct mix, and the new CD mix [d] was made to sound like [c]. The lead vocal is doubletracked in [b] but single in the other stereo versions and in mono. In all stereo versions, the main instrumental track is left and the first vocal track is right. In the rejected mix [b], the track with bass, maracas and falsetto harmony (last 2 refrains) is mixed left with the other instruments, while the track with the second vocal track is mixed right; in the later mixes [c] [d] those two tracks have been mixed to the opposite sides. [c] and [d] have extreme separation between the stereo channels.

Lyrics

Variations

Officially appears on

Bootlegs

Live performances

“The Word” has been played in 13 concerts.

Latest concerts where “The Word” has been played

Going further

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Word_(song)