Girl

Richard Furnstein: "Is there anybody going to listen to my story..." is the perfect lead-off hitter on this song. Lennon is drunk and ready to tell you all about a rumpled beauty who shook his world. She was cool enough to hang, maybe a bit too cool (she put down John Freckin' Lennon in front of his pals!). This concept of feminine charm has haunted me my whole life. Doomed.

Robert Bunter: Lennon uses the exotic scale intervals of Eastern European peasant music on this melancholy lament, then increases the effect on the bridge with the double-time fake mandolin. You can just see a dusky-complected, moustachioed gypsy wearily slumped at one of those miniature tables with the umbrella in a smoky cafe, singing this song while his organ grinder monkey takes a much-deserved break and a quartet of old men beat clumsily at those huge, poorly made mariachi basses that look like guitars and taterbug mandolins nearby.

Richard Furnstein: John gets back at Little Miss Can't Be Wrong by making his buddies George and Paul tease her about her lady parts (the famous "tit-tit-tit-tit" bit), but it's still not enough to lift his melancholy. He resorts to taking a hit from a nearby spliff during the "girl" chorus. Poor dude.

Robert Bunter: Lyrically, it's a perfect chance for Lennon to mix his down-in-the-dumps, crying-in-your-beer persona with his gradually-emerging archly superior psychedelic identity. It's like the guy who sang "The Word" and "And Your Bird Can Sing" crossed with the guy Paul was singing about in "For No One."

Richard Furnstein: I thought they were the same guy!