The song's lyrics are about an extramarital affair that John Lennon was involved in, as hinted in the opening couplet: "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me." Although Lennon never revealed whom he had an affair with, writer Philip Norman speculates that it was either Lennon's close friend and journalist Maureen Cleave or Sonny Freeman. Paul McCartney explained that the term "Norwegian Wood" was a sarcastic reference to the cheap pine wall panelling then in vogue in London. McCartney commented on the final verse of the song: "In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge. It could have meant I lit a fire to keep myself warm, and wasn't the decor of her house wonderful? But it didn't, it meant I burned the fucking place down as an act of revenge, and then we left it there and went into the instrumental."