History
"Girl" was probably one of the most melancholy and complex of their earlier love songs. The songs instrumental has specific comparisons to Greek music; similar to "And I Love Her" and "Michelle".
According to McCartney, he contributed the lines "Was she told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure" and "That a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure." However, in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon claimed that he came up with these lines as a comment on Christianity which he was "opposed to at the time". He explained: "I was just talking about Christianity in that - a thing like you have to be tortured to attain heaven. - be tortured and then it'll be alright, which seems to be a bit true but not in their concept of it. But I didn't believe in that, that you have to be tortured to attain anything, it just so happens that you were."
McCartney also stated that the song's backing vocals were influenced by The Beach Boys, he said:
| “ | The Beach Boys had a song out where they'd done 'la la la' and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it, but not use the same phrase". | ” |
Lennon said that the fantasy girl in the song's lyric was an archetype he had been searching for his entire life ("There is no such thing as the girl — she was a dream") and finally found in Yoko Ono. In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine on 5 December 1980, Lennon said his 1980 song "Woman":
| “ | Reminds me of a Beatles track, but I wasn't trying to make it sound like that. I did it as I did 'Girl' many years ago. So this is the grown-up version of 'Girl.'" | ” |
In November 1977, Capitol Records scheduled the United States release of "Girl" backed with "You're Going to Lose That Girl" as a single (Capitol 4506) to accompany the release of Love Songs, a Beatles' compilation album that contains both of these songs. However, the single was cancelled before it was issued.
Read more about this topic: Girl (The Beatles Song)
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