It was 60 years ago today!

The Beatles release this highly influential album…

“Rubber Soul” was released on December 3, 1965.

This is the cover of the album Rubber Soul by the Beatles.

Rubber Soul was described as an important artistic achievement by the band, meeting a highly favorable critical response and topping sales charts in Britain and the United States for several weeks. The album was certified 6x platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album’s songs demonstrate the Beatles' increasing maturity as lyricists, and in their incorporation of brighter guitar tones and new instrumentation such as sitar, harmonium and fuzz bass, the group striving for more expressive sounds and arrangements for their music.

In their new songs, the Beatles drew inspiration from the Soul music acts signed to the Motown and Stax record labels and from the contemporary Folk-Rock of Bob Dylan and the Byrds. Author Robert Rodriguez highlights the Byrds as having achieved "special notice as an American act that had taken something from the Brits, added to it, then sent it back". In doing so, Rodriguez continues, the Byrds had joined the Beatles and Dylan in "a common pool of influence exchange, where each act gave and took from the other in equal measure".

Rubber Soul was highly influential on the Beatles' peers, leading to a widespread focus away from singles and onto creating albums of consistently high-quality songs. It has been recognized by music critics  as an album that opened up the possibilities of Pop music in terms of lyrical and musical scope, and as a key work in the creation of styles such as Psychedelia and Progressive Rock.

Source: Wikipedia.org

My friend and Toxic A$$ets bandmate, Mike Stolberg, is a huge Beatles fan. In his mid-teens, he discovered the Beatles, specifically their album Rubber Soul. For some reason, their music piqued his curiosity. During his freshman year of college, his friend gave him bootleg copies of every Beatles album. He’s listened to the entire Beatles anthology from start to finish many times and to this day considers one his favorite songs of all time to be "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".

Stoli rockin’ out in 2022.

Photo Credit: Josh Stolberg