The Number Ones: The Beatles' “She Loves You”

The Beatles – “She Loves You”

HIT #1: March 21, 1964

STAYED AT #1: 2 weeks

On the July afternoon in 1963 when the Beatles were settling in to record “She Loves You,” a horde of screaming girls broke into their studio and had to be chased out. And “She Loves You” sounds like the sort of song that you might record after being rescued from an adoring mob. It’s got a nervous, exhilarated energy to it — always pushing forward, never settling down. And after a lifetime of thinking of Ringo Starr as a goofy conductor on a kids’ TV show, it’s instructive to hear him let loose here. In those early Beatles days, he was an absolute motherfucker, and the breathless momentum that he generated had a lot to do with what made those songs so great. The hook from “She Loves You” is what everyone remembers. And even though the phrase “yeah yeah yeah,” had shown up in plenty of pop songs before “She Loves You,” it still became a kind of totem with this track, with grown-ups immediately dismissing the band’s yeah-yeah-yeah music and kids adapting it in their own songs whenever possible. But there’s lyrical subtext to the song, too.

Source: Tom Breihan/stereogum.com

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