4. Back In The USSR Is A Tongue-In-Cheek Parody Of The Beach Boys
Rising up as typical pop bands in the early-sixties, only to evolve with and influence the culture as the decade wore on, there's a lot of similarities between The Beatles and The Beach Boys. So much so that they both had a big influenced on each other; Pet Sounds was created out of a desire to top The Beatles' heavily progressive Rubber Soul, which in turn motivated Sgt Pepper. There's even direct reference to America's Band in some Beatles songs. Girl features "tit, tit, tit" over its middle eight after the band heard The Beach Boys use a similar "la, la, la" (something referenced in Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy). Although that's nothing compared to what they did with the opening of their self-titled album (oh yeah, The White Album is just a colloquial name for the doubled-sided record simply known as The Beatles), with a song lightly mocking Wilson and Bros. all-American sensibilities. Back In The USSR may seem like a "bigger than Jesus" style shrugging off of the Cold War (which it is on one level - there's a lot of cool contextual references in there), but in doing that it's also drawing a line under the differences between the two bands; the entire thing feels like a pastiche of The Beach Boys, with the line "The Ukraine girls really knock me out" a direct reference to California Girls. The title itself, meanwhile, is a nod to Chuck Berry's Back In The USA, making this a plethora of references to American greats.
