Lennon said he wrote "Girl" about an archetypal woman he had been searching for and would finally find in Yoko Ono, the Japanese artist he met in November 1966. In the lyrics, he also expresses his disdain for Christian moral values. The song was the final track recorded for the album. The composition incorporates aspects of Greek folk music, while the arrangement includes an instrumental passage set as a German two-step and an acoustic guitar part played to sound like a Greek bouzouki. High equalisation was applied to Lennon's vocal over the choruses to capture the hissing sound as he drew breath – an effect that also suggested he was inhaling on a marijuana joint. McCartney recalled that he and Harrison sang "Tit-tit-tit" on the middle eights to capture the "innocence" of the Beach Boys singing "La-la-la" on one of their recent songs. Riley likens the musical arrangement to a "scene from the old world" and he concludes of the song: "The old-fashioned atmosphere conveys desire and deception, and Lennon sings it as much to console himself as to make sense of its bewildering proportions ('And she promises the earth to me and I believe her/After all this time I don't know why'). It's the sympathetic side of the anger in 'Norwegian Wood.'"