10 Terrible Rock Songs That Killed Classic Albums

After the whirlwind of a year that was 1965, the Beatles were ready to start experimenting a bit more. The years of being put in their usual moptop model was starting to wear on them, and Rubber Soul was the first time they were willing to expand their horizons, writing more adult love songs on tracks like Norwegian Wood and I’m Looking Through You. So when you have songs like this in your arsenal, how the hell did something like Run For Your Life make the cut?

Recorded more or less just as a warmup before the proper sessions started, this has got to be one of the most questionable John Lennon songs ever written, and this is coming from the same guy who wrote songs with racial slurs in the title. While the song does have a sort of Elvis Presley swagger to it, the lyrics definitely need some work, talking about a high strung boyfriend who would rather see his girlfriend six feet underground than to see her with another man.

Even without the manslaughter part, this is still one of the more uninspired songs on the album, pulling you out of the groove of the rest of the project by the end of the song. It seemed like the Beatles knew that this song wasn’t up to snuff either, closing out their next album with Tomorrow Never Knows, signaling the wild experimentation that they were going to get up to in later years. Rubber Soul was the first step in the Beatles’ second act, but Run For Your Life keeps it from being perfect from back to front.