Readers’ Poll: The 10 Greatest Early Beatles Songs
Unless you just woke up from a deep coma and haven't turned on your TV in weeks, you probably know that the Beatles first played on The Ed Sullivan Show fifty years ago this month. The anniversary has received tons of press, culminating with a CBS television special last Sunday evening. All the hoopla got us thinking about the early days of the band, so we asked our readers to vote on their favorite songs from that period. We decided to draw the cut-off point right before Rubber Soul. Click through to see the results. —Andy Greene
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10. ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’
Like most of Paul McCartney's songs during this period, "I've Just Seen A Face" was inspired by the singer's absolute infatuation with English actress Jane Asher. He lived with her at her families house in the early days of the Beatles, and he wrote "I've Just Seen A Face" about his memory of their early days together. It might feel like a minor work to some, but Paul has performed it countless times over the years, from the 1976 Wings tour to his 1991 Unplugged special.
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9. ‘The Night Before’
This Paul McCartney-penned song from Help! was never a single and never generated much radio airplay. Beatles superfan (and author of the indispensable book Revolution In The Head) Ian MacDonald is extremely critical of it. "Nothing surprising happens in the harmony," he writes. "The lyrics are weak, and the track as a whole is only fairly mainstream pop of its period." All that said, the song has been rediscovered by some fans in recent years, as well as by McCartney himself. He began playing it on his 2011 tour, marking the first time he'd performed it since the original recording in February of 1965.
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8. ‘Yesterday’
Paul McCartney swears that the initial melody for "Yesterday" came to him in a dream, and for a couple of years he was convinced it was subconsciously stolen from a famous composition. After John Lennon and George Martin convinced him it was original, he struggled to come up with lyrics weighty enough to match the brilliant melody. Then, on a trip to Portugal in May of 1965 with his girlfriend Jane Asher, he finally stumbled on the single word "yesterday." The rest of the song quickly fell into place and he recorded it solo and acoustic at Abbey Road a few weeks later. George Martin added a symphony and it was on the radio less than two months later. It has since become one of the most covered songs in history.
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7. ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’
Three months before he died, John Lennon spoke with Playboy about writing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" with Paul McCartney. "We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball," he said. "Like in 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh you-u-u / got that something. . .' And Paul hits this chord [E minor] and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that — both playing into each other's noses." It became the first Beatles song to break big in America, quickly reaching the top of the Hot 100 and finally giving them the excuse to cross the Atlantic. Nobody in the states had any idea these four kids from Liverpool would become the most acclaimed act of the 20th century.
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6. ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
Ringo Starr only wrote a handful of Beatles song, but an off-the-cuff malapropism he made in '64 inspired the title of one of their most enduring songs. Nobody remembers exactly where he said it, but at some point during that whirlwind year, he said it had been a "hard day's night" after a particularly grueling day. The phrase had a nice ring to it, and Lennon and McCartney soon shaped it into a song that became the title track to their first movie. The song (and the film) kicks off with one of the most famous opening chords in the history of music, but the exact details of how exactly it was created remains a hot point of contention even fifty years later.
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5. ‘She Loves You’
The Beatles had a bunch of UK hits before "She Loves You," but this is the song that went absolutely nuclear. English fans bought the 45 just as quickly as the plants could produce them in the summer of '63, even though most people in America hadn't even heard of them yet. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the song while on tour in England in June of 1963, inspired by Bobby Rydell's call and response song "Forget Him." Within a few hours they produced something way beyond the abilities of Rydell, with an incredible hook and an overflow of raw energy. They even agreed to record it in German, and thus "Sie Liebt Dich" was born. They quickly had enough pull to avoid such moves again.
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4. ‘I Feel Fine’
The Beatles were recording "Eight Days A Week" when John Lennon began messing around with a guitar riff that quickly formed the backbone or "I Feel Fine." They cut it less than two weeks later, nailing it in only nine takes. The little bit of audible feedback at the very beginning was completely unintentional, but John liked it so much that it stayed in the song. Many people (John included) claim it was the first use of feedback on a commercial song, though The Who had been utilizing such sounds during their live gigs for quite some time.
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3. ‘And I Love Her’
Inspired by his girlfriend Jane Asher, Paul McCartney wrote the gorgeous ballad "And I Love Her" in February of 1964, right after they returned from their first trip to America. It took an unusually long three days to complete, but the hard work paid off. The song was a great showcase for McCartney's writing skills and it paved the way for "Yesterday" the following year.
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2. ‘Ticket To Ride’
One of the stand-out tracks from the Help! soundtrack, "Ticket To Ride" was a harbinger of the harder, more complex Beatles songs to come over the next five years. "It was a slightly new sound at the time," Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970. "It was pretty fuckin' heavy for then. It's a heavy record, that's why I like it. I used to like guitars." The song hit number one in America and was covered by the Carpenters in 1969, which is funny when one considers that John Lennon once claimed a "Ticket To Ride" is a clean bill of health that prostitutes in Hamburg present to potential customers.
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1. ‘I Saw Her Standing There’
"I Saw Her Standing There" is one of the most important songs in the entire history of the Beatles. Not only was it one of the first songs that John and Paul wrote together, but it was the kick-off to their debut LP Please Please Me. It was also one of the first original songs the group ever played in concert, and every night it became an absolute show-stopper, encouraging the young group to keep churning out new tunes. American audiences didn't hear it until well over a year after it was recorded, but it quickly became a hit here as well. It was largely written by Paul McCartney, but when John Lennon made a surprise appearance at an Elton John show at Madison Square Garden show in 1974, he opted to end their brief set with it. It wound up being the final song he ever performed in public.