{"id":23411,"date":"2026-07-31T18:36:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=23411"},"modified":"2026-07-31T18:36:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:36:46","slug":"theres-a-1965-john-lennon-song-little-girl-that-no-ones-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=23411","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s a 1965 John Lennon Song, &#8216;Little Girl,&#8217; That No One&#8217;s Heard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tSome good news the world doesn\u2019t get every day: There\u2019s a brand new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/john-lennon\/\" id=\"auto-tag_john-lennon\" data-tag=\"john-lennon\">John Lennon<\/a> song from 1965 that nobody knew about until now. It\u2019s a home demo called \u201cLittle Girl,\u201d a previously unheard tune on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/beatles-rubber-soul-special-edition-1235600020\/\">upcoming <em>Rubber Soul <\/em>Special Edition<\/a>, which arrives on October 2. Nobody had any idea this song existed \u2014 it\u2019s never been bootlegged or even rumored.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cLittle Girl\u201d is a real mystery. How did it stay hidden until now? \u201cYeah, it was surprising,\u201d producer Giles Martin tells Rolling Stone. \u201cIt was one of those things that came from the Lennon Estate \u2014 I think it was Sean. It was one of those things where they say, \u2018Oh, and then there\u2019s <em>this<\/em>.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIt\u2019s a fragile, gorgeous, bittersweet little tune, just John and his acoustic guitar, sighing in Buddy Holly mode. He sings, \u201cLittle girl, I\u2019ve come to say\/That this has been a lovely day\/I love you.\u201d The song was discovered on a Lennon tape reel; Martin edited two sections together for the 2:17 <em>Rubber Soul<\/em> version. It\u2019s reminiscent of \u201cI\u2019m Only Sleeping,\u201d especially when he sings the \u201cI love <em>youuu<\/em>\u201d hook. It\u2019s mind-blowing that this song exists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIt\u2019s strange \u201cLittle Girl\u201d didn\u2019t show up earlier, given how deep they\u2019ve gone into the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/beatles-2\/\" id=\"auto-tag_beatles-2\" data-tag=\"beatles-2\">Beatles<\/a> vaults before. But that always happens whenever the Beatles do an archival project like this. On the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-album-reviews\/beatles-revolver-super-deluse-edition-review-1234617075\/\"><em>Revolver<\/em> box<\/a> in 2022, there was a stunning acoustic demo of \u201cYellow Submarine,\u201d with John singing lonesome lyrics about his childhood \u2014 it shattered everything we thought we knew about that song. On the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-album-reviews\/beatles-white-album-super-deluxe-is-a-revelatory-dive-into-their-frayed-late-sixties-drama-753695\/\">White Album 2018 edition<\/a>, there was the four-part harmony version of \u201cGood Night,\u201d with all four Beatles singing together \u2014 a devastating beautiful performance, but one that sat unheard in the vaults for fifty years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tGiles Martin wasn\u2019t even certain of how unknown \u201cLittle Girl\u201d was. \u201cLike with all that stuff, I wasn\u2019t sure whether people knew about it or not, or whether it was on YouTube,\u201d he says. \u201cQuite often I\u2019ll find something and go, \u2018This is amazing.\u2019 Then someone goes, \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s on YouTube. Everybody knows about that.\u2019 I\u2019m always the last person to know.\u201d<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ editors-pick-module lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut nobody had any hint of this one. (\u201cIf <em>you <\/em>didn\u2019t know it existed, then no one knew,\u201d Martin quips.) It\u2019s a major surprise. As Martin says, \u201cI listen to that and I go, \u2018Yeah, this is really interesting,\u2019 apart from, \u2018It\u2019s another song that would have made the album.\u2019 There\u2019s an insatiable desire for something more. But I think it\u2019s good to see all of the pencil drawings before you see the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tNobody seems to know when the song comes from. You can tell it isn\u2019t any earlier than summer 1965, because John tweaks a hook from Paul\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ve Just Seen a Face,\u201d which was recorded in June and released in August on <em>Help! <\/em>(He turns \u201chad it been another day\u201d to \u201cif you\u2019d asked me yesterday.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIt\u2019s especially shocking since the Beatles were feverishly scrounging up new songs for <em>Rubber Soul<\/em>. That\u2019s the whole backstage drama behind the sessions \u2014 the Beatles went into Abbey Road in October 1965 with a deadline to crash out an album in four weeks, in time for Christmas. Except they had hardly any finished songs. So they were desperate for material. They wrote seven of the songs in the final week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut that\u2019s how <em>Rubber Soul<\/em> turned out so loose and experimental \u2014 they were ready to try any crazy studio idea. \u201cIt\u2019s not as though, as you know, there was anything they held back, as far as demos go, or anything like that,\u201d Giles Martin says. They even tried jamming in the blues instrumental \u201c12-Bar Original,\u201d which they wisely axed. (A three-minute edit was on <em>Anthology 2<\/em> in 1996, which was more than anyone needed.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cSome people will say, why didn\u2019t you put the \u201912-Bar Original\u2019 on it?\u201d Martin says of the new edition. \u201cBut well, it\u2019s not very good in the first place, and it\u2019s on the <em>Anthology<\/em>. And it\u2019s not really linked to the album they were making at the same time. But \u2018Little Girl\u2019 hasn\u2019t been heard, so it makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThe Beatles were foraging high and low for scraps, right down to the wire. \u201cMichelle\u201d is a throwaway that Paul wrote in his teens, to impress Liverpool art-school girls by pretending to be French. But he dusted it off for <em>Rubber Soul<\/em>. The deadline pressure got so frantic, their engineer Norman Smith pitched them a tune. Hell, the lads got desperate enough to draft Ringo into songwriting duty \u2014 \u201cWhat Goes On\u201d became his first credit ever. Asked in 1966 what he contributed, Ringo said, \u201cAbout five words.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut that makes it an even bigger mystery \u2014 how did \u201cLittle Girl\u201d slip through the cracks? It might have come too late to make the cut for <em>Rubber Soul<\/em>, but that\u2019s pretty late, considering that John and Paul were writing right up to the final hours. The night before the album was due, they still needed two more songs, so John showed up with \u201cGirl\u201d and Paul with \u201cYou Won\u2019t See Me\u201d\u2014two of their best. (Always competing, these two.) They also refurbished \u201cWait,\u201d a leftover from <em>Help!<\/em>, which gave them a full fourteen songs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tSo how did John let a song like \u201cLittle Girl\u201d go? In the <em>Rubber Soul<\/em> liner notes, legendary historian Kevin Howlett notes that there\u2019s only a tiny clue of the song\u2019s existence until now. John jotted down a version of these lines on a postcard, found in the book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/john-lennons-letters-and-drawings-to-be-published-in-new-book-254569\/\">The John Lennon Letters<\/a><\/em>, edited by Hunter Davies. It\u2019s a postcard that George Harrison got from a Japanese fan, dated 1965 or 1966; on the back, John wrote the lines, \u201cLittle girl I\u2019ve come to stay\/And this time I just have to say\/I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThese lines are part of a longer verse in the mode of \u201cTicket To Ride\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m a Loser,\u201d about a woman who leaves him. The lines are so clumsy, it\u2019s no surprise he never used them. (\u201cWhen a girl begins to become a problem\/Pretty soon the girl must go\/When they\u2019re gone you find at last you love them\/Pretty soon you want to know.\u201d) But it seems he salvaged just a fragment of the fragment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cLittle Girl\u201d is still a work in progress with unfinished lyrics \u2014 John mostly just sings \u201cI love you\u201d and \u201cla la la,\u201d just to pin down the tune. John and Paul always believed in placeholder lyrics, to help remember their melodies. In the early days, they didn\u2019t have any recording devices, and neither could read music, so they needed verbal cues they\u2019d recall the next day. Paul <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/tv-movies\/tv-movie-reviews\/mccartney-3-2-1-tv-review-beatles-rick-rubin-hulu-1196447\/\">explains<\/a> in the 2021 Hulu documentary <em>3, 2, 1<\/em>, with Rick Rubin. \u201cComing from Liverpool, there\u2019s a lot of sort of Irish Celtic influence, and the Celts never wrote anything down. It\u2019s the bardic tradition. So that\u2019s our excuse. Me and John used to say, \u2018It was the bardic tradition!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cLittle girl\u201d is a phrase that John sang briefly in \u201cTwist and Shout\u201d and \u201cThank You Girl,\u201d then more prominently in \u201cI Feel Fine,\u201d where it\u2019s the hook in the middle eight, and \u201cRun For Your Life.\u201d But there\u2019s no connection to any of those songs. The first song Paul ever wrote was \u201cI Lost My Little Girl,\u201d right after his mother\u2019s death. (\u201cFairly obvious,\u201d he admitted later.) For John and Paul, teenage boys who lost their mothers, it was a secret trauma they shared. In the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/tv-movies\/tv-movie-reviews\/beatles-documentary-get-back-disney-1260172\/\">Get Back<\/a><\/em> sessions, John and Paul played \u201cI Lost My Little Girl\u201d together, even though nobody else (not even the other Beatles) could have known what it meant to them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tA closer connection might be John\u2019s favorite Brian Wilson song: \u201cThe Little Girl I Once Knew,\u201d a single that the Beach Boys released in late 1965, days before <em>Rubber Soul<\/em> came out. \u201cIt\u2019s GOT to be a hit,\u201d John raved in <em>Melody Maker<\/em> at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s the greatest record I\u2019ve heard for weeks. It\u2019s fantastic. I hope it will be a hit. It\u2019s all Brian Wilson.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIt also has a hint of \u201cIt\u2019s Only Love,\u201d a song that made the cut for <em>Help!<\/em> and ended up on the U.S. version of <em>Rubber Soul<\/em>. It\u2019s a tune where John is singing cliches so saccharine, he spends the whole song trying (and failing) not to snicker. But he can\u2019t deliver the line \u201cJust the sight of you makes night-time bright\u201d with a straight face, and that goes double for the next line, which is \u201cVery bright.\u201d That\u2019s the kind of song he was determined to quit writing on <em>Rubber Soul<\/em> \u2014 it\u2019s why he wanted to aim higher in \u201cNorwegian Wood\u201d and \u201cIn My Life.\u201d He\u2019s reaching there with the melancholy tune of \u201cLittle Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIf \u201cLittle Girl\u201d was too late for <em>Rubber Soul<\/em>, that might explain the melodic link to \u201cI\u2019m Only Sleeping,\u201d on <em>Revolver<\/em>. (When John sings \u201cI love you,\u201d it\u2019s uncannily close to how he sings the word \u201csleeping.\u201d) He might have just decided to rework this scrap into a stronger song for the next album. That\u2019s how fast the Fabs worked. They were already used to cramming out material at the last minute, when they got to deadline time. A year before <em>Rubber Soul<\/em>, on <em>Beatles for Sale<\/em>, they got caught short the night before the album was due, so they stayed up all night bashing out quickie oldies covers. (For any other band, we\u2019d call this \u201cfiller.\u201d But their filler beat almost anyone else\u2019s keepers.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules trending-in-article lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThe Beatles had no idea <em>Rubber Soul<\/em> was a masterpiece while they were making it. They were just racing to cobble an album together. But like everybody else, they were shocked when they heard the results. The lads spent the rest of their career assuming that any last-minute whim they dreamed up would be touched by that same <em>Rubber Soul <\/em>stroke of<em> <\/em>genius. And because they were the Beatles, they were maddeningly right.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIt might seem insane that a John Lennon song like \u201cLittle Girl\u201d could remain a secret for so many decades, unheard and unsuspected. But that\u2019s the essence of how the Beatles worked in the frantic creative frenzy of their youth. They cranked out music so fast, dropping masterpieces like crumbs, always driving hard to the next song. That\u2019s why the world is still catching up with fleeting moments they left behind decades ago. And that\u2019s why the Beatles\u2019 story keeps on evolving and mutating through the years \u2014 every time you think you\u2019ve heard it all, there\u2019s always more. \u201cLittle Girl\u201d took all these years to come to light, yet it\u2019s worth the wait. Still, you don\u2019t regret a single day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some good news the world doesn\u2019t get every day: There\u2019s a brand new John Lennon song from 1965 that nobody knew about until now. It\u2019s a home demo called \u201cLittle Girl,\u201d a previously unheard tune on the upcoming Rubber Soul Special Edition, which arrives on October 2. Nobody had any idea this song existed \u2014&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/john-lennon-1965.jpg?w=1600&h=900&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-trending-viral-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}