The Beatles: Single By Single

“Gentlemen, I think you’ve made your first number one.”
The Beatles' Marathon 'Please Please Me' Session, Hour by Hour

 

And here we have that energy I was so fond of in the early days of the Fab Four. Between the performance and production they took your basic boy wants girl love song and made it sound electric and sexy with Lennon's growls on "C'mon" adding to the urgency. Bravo!

 

Was the Mono version released on the Red Album? If so then you could probably find it there.

 

Love Me Do - It's just OK. Never been a personal favorite, but it's likeable as somewhat for the very early Beatles.

Please Please Me - this song is stronger overall. I really like the harmonica, vocal harmonies and Ringo's drum fills. This is just more enjoyable for me than Love Me Do. The B-sides for these 2 singles are pretty good too and not just throw-aways.

I like the Beatles' early material, but usually in smaller doses. When we get to the Hard Day's Night album era, they just sound better and more confident as a band and have stronger and melodic compositions by that time overall.

 

Please Please Me is absolutely fantastic. It is the sound of a band putting everything they have into a song knowing it has to be great. From the harmonica to John's strong lead vocal and Paul and George's backing vocals to Ringo's drum fills, it is a total energetic joy. In just two minutes they pack more wallop than most 5 minute plus epics of more recent years. My favorite Beatles single until "A Hard Day's Night"!

Ask Me Why is a very good B side. The vocal harmonies work well.

 

Please Please Me is infinitesimally better than Love Me Do. I understand why George Martin believed it was a true #1 single - Please Please Me is catchy, energetic, and all around fab.

Ask Me Why has fantastic vocal harmonies and an interesting chord sequence. I love John’s vocals in the middle right.

 

I'm on board. Love LMD. Ages well. Love the roughish harmonica. Ready for #2.

 

A classic and one I still thoroughly enjoy, that harmonica at the start is fantastic and really sets the mood. Not bad for their first #1 (on 3 out of the 4 charts. Only the least accurate chart of the four had it at #2 and should be ignored)

 

PPM - fantastic. In the introduction to the song it's stated that The Beatles were not very well known outside Liverpool and Hamburg but by the time PPM was a single they had played across the North of England and I think that's where their popularity grew first. Then they went national through TV performances.

 

ppm should have been on the "1" album.

 

'Please Please Me' - what can you say about this? It's simply fantastic and the excitement it generates is contagious. The phenomenon begins here.

 

Absolutely. They were too rigid with the "number one" rules. PPM had to be on there. Write the rules in a way that it would be included.

 

Nothing like it had been heard in Britain. It knocked George Martin's socks off. Then Brian took it to their publisher, Dick James, and he was knocked out and said "it must be number one". So, at that same meeting with Brian, James immediately called a big TV show producer, played it over the phone and the guy immediately booked them onto the show asap. Incredible song.

 

Please Please Me was, so far as I can recall, the first Beatles track I heard. I was living in the UK at the time. I always liked it, but I like it even more now and it has a ton of nostalgia value.

 

This is where the cultural revolution begins. This sounded like nothing that came before it, but coincidentally, it did have something in common with another single that was released at around the exact same time. The Bobby Vee hit, "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes" also has that same jet-age sounding chord sequence in between it's verses (I ♭III IV V). In the case of "Please Please Me" that's E G A B and for "A Thousand Eyes" that's E♭ G♭ A♭ B♭.

People often compare this to "Cathy's Clown" because of the upper harmony singing only one note, while the lower cascades downward. That's an oversimplification. Whereas Phil Everly only holds that upper note for the duration of one word, with Don doing a downward melisma on it, Paul and John sing a total of eighteen words in that manner.

The call and answer element that follows (C'mon C'mon) was an interesting, but not inevitable decision. It pretty much renders it one of those songs that doesn't quite sound right unless there is more than one person singing it, and preferably more than two.

The lyrics of the bridge are unique in the Beatles' catalogue. They must be sung with a proletariat accent of some sort (whether it be Scouse or Brooklynese) in order to get all the fancy internal rhymes to work. In other words, it involves dropping a couple of Gs:

I don't wanna start complainin'
But you know there's always rain in
My heart (In my heart)
I do all the pleasin' with you
It's so hard to reason with you

To the best of my knowledge, Lennon & McCartney would never again revisit this sort of Lorenz Hart style rhyming. Finally, the song's ending is downright iconic and much copied. That chord sequence (E G C B E) pretty much summed up what Merseybeat was all about.

Here's the mono version which (as everyone knows), is a different take:

 

Agree a bad deliberate miss.
All based on it wasn't a chart topper on a certain chart. Fact is it was number 1 on a darn important chart similar to cash box in the U.S.
It's not like the 27 on the cd was a rounded number as with Elvis 30 #1s where they left off I Want You I Need You I Love You for similar reasons.
28 would have been fine and it's short enough to have fit on the disc.

 

A great great track.
The first Beatlemania song both in success and style.

 

The song's great, but only musically. Lyrically, they were still writing that cutey teenage love stuff.

 

P.S. I Love You and Please Please Me are great songs...

 

Play it at .75 speed and it gives you a very rough idea of what the original "Orbison" version might have sounded like

 

"Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me". It's both great songs to my ears. When I put them on, there is nothing new to find, I know them inside out and upside down but I never tire of them. I love the sound they produce. 5/5.

The b-sides. "PS I Love You" is a little too pretty, it's not to me they are singing but I find it enjoyable. 3/5. "Ask Me Why". Not a very memorable song but I like it. 3/5

 

Presumably you mean 'infinitely' not "infinitesimally"...that is, a lot better not just slightly better.

 

For me, every time I hear the ending I want to hear the ‘sha la la la la la la-a’ of Baby It’s You.

 

PPM is easily top tier Merseybeat, right at its cusp. My father in law, from australia, told me that when he first heard the track when it was released, he knew there was something special about the group.

He wasn’t wrong.

 

Ringo' s drumming is so good.