10 Darkest Songs John Lennon Ever Wrote
3. Run For Your Life
Featured on: Rubber Soul (1965)
The upbeat, blues vibe gives Run for Your Life a dance quality that jars with the lyrics. It is the most menacing song recorded by The Beatles. Lennon would address his jealousy issues on other tracks; however, future attempts were a much more grounded and introspective analysis in which he acknowledged jealousy as a serious character flaw.
Run for Your Life’s “Well, you know that I'm a wicked guy. And I was born with a jealous mind. And I can't spend my whole life, trying just to make you toe the line” was not part of this soul searching. Fans consider the track a blight on Rubber Soul.
The song is ominously addressed to “little girl” and laden with outright death threats. The line “I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man” is taken from the Elvis Presley song Baby Let’s Play House.
It is this lyric which formed the basis of the song. For this reason, Lennon referred to the “throwaway song” as being “knocked off”. Paul McCartney also dismissed the track as “a bit of a macho song”.