THE REAL STORY BEHIND "LITTLE GIRL" REVEALED

It involves the release of a previously unheard Beatles song, and therefore one not included in The Beatles‘ official discography. The discovery came from John Lennon‘s private archive, and it was Giles Martin, the project’s producer, who received the tape. “It was surprising,” said Martin, who acknowledged that the track appeared almost by chance, thanks to Sean Lennon, who was the one who handed it over to him.

The new song was part of Sean’s collection of objects and rarities. Giles Martin admitted to Rolling Stone: “It’s one of those things where they say, ‘Oh, and there’s this, too.'”

“Little Girl” was recorded in 1965; it is a John Lennon demo of a song that was never completed with the group. The recording was put away, and only a very few people at Abbey Road Studios knew it existed. They managed to keep the secret until today.

The release of the new Rubber Soul edition will be on October 2nd—we were all expecting this release last year, which was its 60th anniversary. Danny Eccleston of Mojo traveled to Abbey Road Studios, where Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, played the song for him and uncovered the origins of this recording.

The track is sung by John Lennon with a disarming sweetness; it is a simple yet melancholy melody, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. The recording was edited to adapt two fragments and thus assemble the 2-minute and 17-second version that will reach the public. The lyrics go: “Little girl, I’ve come to say / That this has been a lovely day / I love you, I love you …”, and then the song develops with an ending more characteristic of John’s lyricism (“…If you’d have asked me yesterday / Then I’d have told you sweet fa…”).

“This shows where Lennon was at that point,” to which Giles Martin said: “It’s a pop song, perhaps one you could imagine on Double Fantasy later on, once he had completed his trajectory. But the ‘sweet fa’ part is interesting. It’s as if he were thinking, ‘Aren’t we moving away from these kinds of songs?'”

Regarding this tape, very few people in the studio knew about it. It was a very well-kept secret.

The tape contained four fragments of John’s attempts to perform the song—later edited into a single performance by Giles Martin—dated by Rouse to 1965. Giles Martin said: “I wasn’t sure if people knew about it or if it was on YouTube. Many times I find something incredible and someone tells me ‘everyone already knows about it,’ but this time that wasn’t the case.” The song had never circulated, not even on bootleg recordings.

Howlett, author of the liner notes for the new Rubber Soul album, cites further evidence for this date: lyrics that Lennon scribbled on a postcard included by Hunter Davies in his 2012 collection, The John Lennon Letters. Amidst cross-outs, one of the choruses of “little girl…” appears verbatim, although another verse suggests a more melancholy song than the one heard on the tape: “When a girl begins to be a problem / Pretty soon the girl must go / When they’re gone you find at last you love them…”.

“Little Girl” is not the only revelation of the 2026 Rubber Soul re-release, but it is certainly the most extraordinary and compelling one. Fans are always hoping for more tracks, more previously unheard material. And this is one we weren’t expecting, which we will officially have soon. The new release of Rubber Soul was remixed by Giles Martin and his collaborator Sam Okell – Sam is a Grammy-winning senior mixing and recording engineer known for his extensive work on The Beatles’ remastered back catalog, film scores, and spatial audio mixes alongside Giles Martin.

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