How Paul McCartney Reacted to the Rumor The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ Was About a Lesbian

TL;DR:

• Time magazine said The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” is about a lesbian.
• Time magazine was critical of pop music in general.
• “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” appeared on a hit album.

Time magazine said The Beatles‘ “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” was about a lesbian. In the same article, the magazine claimed another Beatles song was about a prostitute. Subsequently, Paul McCartney responded to these interpretations.

How ‘Time’ magazine interpreted The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ and ‘Day Tripper’

According to the book The Beatles: Off the Record includes an interview from 1966. In it, an interviewer asks a long question. “I’d like to direct this question to Misters Lennon and McCartney,” the interviewer said. 

“A recent article in Time magazine put down pop music and referred to ‘Day Tripper‘ as being about a prostitute and ‘Norwegian Wood’ was about a lesbian,” he continued. “I want to know what your intent was when you wrote them and what your feeling is about Time‘s criticism of the music that is being written today.”

Paul gave a humorous response. “We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, you know,” he said.

The Beatles’ John Lennon discussed how one of his affairs inspired the song

The book All We Are Saying; The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes a 1980 interview. In it, John discussed “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).” “‘Norwegian Wood’ is my song completely,” he said. “It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn’t want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. 

“I’d always had some kind of affairs going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair,” John added. “But in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn’t tell. But I can’t remember any specific woman it had to do with.”

How ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ and its parent album performed in the United States and the United Kingdom

“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” was never a single, so it did not reach the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on The Beatles’ Rubber Soul. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for six weeks, staying on the chart for a total of 70 weeks.

According to The Official Charts Company, “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” never charted in the United Kingdom either. On the other hand, Rubber Soul topped the U.K. chart for eight weeks and stayed on the chart for 42 weeks altogether.

Regardless of what it’s about, “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” is a classic track.