When The Beatles initially became famous, they were put under immense pressure. While it looked like a lot of travelling and having fun, the band had to play countless shows, do interviews, tour relentlessly, and write a great deal of music. The record deal they were initially signed meant they needed to write enough songs to bring a lot of artists to a standstill.
Luckily, with The Beatles, they had the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney to help. The duo were able to bounce ideas off one another and challenge each other creatively so that they could come up with various styles and sounds that continued to push the boundaries of their music throughout their careers.
The fact that they were able to work with each other meant that the songs they made while in The Beatles never grew stale. Many bands would likely have found a winning formula and stuck to it, but the Fab Four didn’t do that. They were constantly thinking about what their works meant, how they challenged listeners, and how the lyrics could be interpreted. Even details as small as track titles were given considerable thought.
This can be seen clearly in the track ‘And I Love Her’, a ballad of a Beatles track that gives the listener insight into the theme before it even begins playing. This is done through the title. “It was the first ballad I impressed myself with,” said McCartney when discussing the piece. “The ‘And’ in the title was an important thing. ‘And I Love Her’, it came right out of left field, you were right up to speed the minute you heard it.”
He continued, “The title comes in the second verse and doesn’t repeat. You would often go to town on the title, but this was almost an aside. ‘Oh… and I love you’. It still holds up and George played really good guitar on it. It worked very well.”
It’s a testament to the ability of The Beatles that their songs, despite having so many pieces they needed to write, still committed a great deal of time and effort into their music. The lyrics were never thrown away, the melodies are intricate, the themes robust and even aspects of the song that some don’t pay attention to, such as titles, are incredibly thought provoking and necessary towards the track.
There’s a reason The Beatles reached the level of fame they did and continue to have the influence they have. They are not just a band that made good songs but a musical outfit that continued to push the realms of what a song, a record, and a movement could be. In achieving that, they created a vast range of tracks, and of course, some had to be a bit left field.
