Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul was the eleventh album by the group in the US, released three days after the British LP by Capitol Records in both the mono and stereo formats. It began its 59 week chart run on Christmas Day, topping the Billboard Album chart for six weeks starting on 8 January 1966. The album sold 1.2 million copies within nine days of its release, and to date has sold over six million copies in America.

The American version differed markedly from its British counterpart. Capitol removed the "Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man", "What Goes On" and "If I Needed Someone", and replaced them with two from the UK Help! album: "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love". Through peculiarities of sequencing, by placing the Help! tracks at the beginning of each side, Rubber Soul was deliberately reconfigured to appear a "folk rock" album to angle the Beatles into that emergent lucrative American genre during 1965.

The stereo mix sent to the US from England has what are commonly called "false starts" at the beginning of "I'm Looking Through You." which are on every American stereo copy of the album from 1965 to 1987. The US version of "The Word" is also recognisably different because it has Lennon's double-tracked vocals, an extra falsetto harmony on the left channel during the last two refrains, with some percussion panning to the right and then the left channel during the instrumental break. "Michelle" on the US mono version has louder percussion and the fade-out runs ten seconds longer. The 1965 American stereo and mono mixes are available on compact disc as part of The Capitol Albums, Volume 2 box set.