“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” by The Beatles

"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is the Beatles song where the sitar walked into Western rock and roll. It sits on Rubber Soul, released in December 1965, and it's mostly John Lennon's, with Paul McCartney chipping in on the words: a guarded, sidelong account of an affair Lennon was having in London, written in the inward-looking mode Bob Dylan had just made fair game.

Lennon sings lead and strums acoustic guitar, McCartney plays bass and sings backup, Ringo Starr handles drums and tambourine, and George Martin produced. But it's George Harrison's sitar, added at Lennon's request after Harrison fell for the instrument on the set of Help!, that makes it drone and shimmer. It was the first sitar on a Western rock record, and raga rock, psychedelia and Ravi Shankar's rise in the West all followed through that door.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.