I bought all the American format albums, with the single exception of The Beatles’ Second Album, which I never quite got around to. I should have listened to a few of these on youtube first, to be fair, but I somehow couldn’t stop myself and voted for She Loves You, because “yeah yeah yeah” is just genius.
Apropos of not much, btw, one of my few recurring dreams, or dream segments, of my adult life has involved a Beatles album from maybe 1965 with an orangish cover that I have somehow never listened to, not even in bits here and there. I’m always disappointed when I wake up from it.
JRDelerious, you’re considering “She Loves You” as the standalone single anticipating “With the Beatles,” and “I Want to Hold shout Hand” as the standalone single anticipating “A Hard Day’s Night”? Seems a bit of a time stretch in both cases, especially the latter.
At different times, 8 of the songs on this album were my favorite Beatles song. “I Feel Fine” was never one of my favs. I found that riff a real pain to perform on guitar. I voted for “Bad Boy” because it was one of my favs that I think deserves some mention. The song just kicks ass! And it was one of those songs that never appeared on a UK Album until Rarities was released, which was another UK catchall of singles not released on canonical albums collections. Here in the states, it was released on Beatles VI.
Picking nits here, but “Bad Boy” had earlier appeared in the UK on the 1966 compilation “A Collection of Beatles Oldies (But Goldies)”
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Delirious, dagnabbit, people, y’all ruin my vanity searches!
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Those two tracks are an interesting case, as IMO they are actually stand-alones for the same album, or the same creative period, if you’d prefer.
I Want to Hold Your Hand followed release of With The Beatles by barely a week and it was recorded during the sessions for WTB. One can make the argument, then, that this makes IWHYH in fact be the standalone “OF” With The Beatles, only that it was released one week after instead of a couple of months before (later on the Day Tripper standalone single and Rubber Soul album would have a true simultaneous release).
Not all pre-album standalones were that closely associated with the finished album itself, though. Let’s reiterate what has been said, the UK record market in at the time was based primarily on brand-new A-sides coming out at few-months intervals. You did not stick around a whole year putting out single after single from the same last album, that is a practice from a later age. She Loves You would be an inter-album stand-alone meant to send something new up the charts and keep up interest until a shortly-arriving next album/new single, and being 3 months pre-WTB, in the public’s and salespeople’s eyes it fit the then-common pattern of an anticipatory release (it would not be the longest pre-album single separation in the catalog).
For A Hard Day’s Night you had something more common to their “movie” albums, a single of tracks that would later end up in the soundtrack (Can’t Buy Me Love), but also an unusually late release of the non-album lead-in, the “Long Tall Sally” EP, an unusual stand-alone EP of theretofore-unreleased tracks.
Got it, thanks. Sorry I misspelled your username.
I voted for IWTHYH for the simple facts that:
- It’s iconic
- It was the song that made them here in America, and
- Turn up the distortion on your guitar/amp and this song can freakin’ rock.