- Published on 1963
- Author: Lennon/McCartney
- Track 4 on “1962 ‐ 1966 (Red Album)“
- Track 4 on “Past Masters Volume 1“
Beatles quotes about “She Loves You”
JOHN 1963: “We wrote that two days before we recorded it, actually.”
PAUL 1963: “John and I wrote it together. We were in a van up in Newcastle somewhere, and we’d just gone over to our hotel. I originally got an idea of doing one of those answering songs, where a couple of us sing about ‘she loves you’ …and the other one sort of says the ‘yes, yes’ bit. You know, ‘yeah yeah’ answering whoever is saying it. But we decided that was a crummy idea anyway. But we had the idea to write a song called ‘She Loves You’ then. And we just sat up in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it, you know.”
JOHN 1963: “‘Yeah.’ That’s sort of the main catch phrase from ‘She Loves You.’ We’d written the song, and then suddenly realized we needed more… so we added ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ and it caught on.”
JOHN 1980: “It was written together (with Paul) and I don’t remember how. I remember it was Paul’s idea– instead of singing ‘I love you’ again, we’d have a third party. The ‘Woooo’ was taken from the Isley Brothers ‘Twist And Shout,’ which we stuck into everything.”
PAUL 1982: “Occasionally, we’d overrule George Martin, like on ‘She Loves You,’ we end on a sixth chord, a very jazzy sort of thing. And he said, ‘Oh, you can’t do that! A sixth chord? It’s too jazzy.’ We just said, ‘No, it’s a great hook, we’ve got to do it.'”
PAUL 1988: “We rehearsed the end bit of ‘She Loves You’ and took it to George. And he just laughed and said, ‘Well, you can’t do the end of course… that sixth… it’s too like the Andrew Sisters.’ We just said, ‘Alright, we’ll try it without,’ and we tried it and it wasn’t as good. Then he conceded, ‘You’re right, I guess.’ But we were both very flexible. We would listen to George’s ideas too, because he was a producer and a musician, and he obviously knew what he was talking about. There was good to-and-fro. We loved that bit, and we rehearsed it alot. John and I wrote that in a hotel room, on twin beds during an afternoon off– I mean, God bless their little cotton socks, those boys WORKED! Here I am talking about an afternoon off, and we’re sitting there writing! We just loved it so much. It wasn’t work.”
About “She Loves You”
“She Loves You” was released as a single in 1963. The single set and surpassed several sales records in the United Kingdom charts, and set a record in the United States as one of the five Beatles songs that held the top five positions in the charts simultaneously, on 4 April 1964. It remains the band’s best-selling single in the United Kingdom and the top-selling single of the 1960s there by any artist.
In November 2004, Rolling Stone ranked “She Loves You” number 64 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In August 2009, at the end of its “Beatles Weekend”, BBC Radio 2 announced that “She Loves You” was the Beatles’ all-time best-selling single in the UK based on information compiled by the Official Charts Company.
In Canada, the song was included on the album Twist and Shout. In the US, it was the final song on The Beatles’ Second Album.
Lennon and McCartney started composing “She Loves You” on 26 June 1963 after a concert at the Majestic Ballroom in Newcastle upon Tyne during their tour with Roy Orbison and Gerry and the Pacemakers. They began writing the song on the tour bus, and continued later that night at their hotel in Newcastle eventually completing it the following day at McCartney’s family home in Forthlin Road, Liverpool.
The Beatles also recorded a German lyrics version of the song titled “Sie Liebt Dich“.
Personnel
- John Lennon – vocal, rhythm guitar
- Paul McCartney – vocal, bass
- George Harrison – harmony vocal, lead guitar
- Ringo Starr – drums
- George Martin – producer
- Norman Smith – engineer
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