19. I Want To Hold Your Hand (single, 1963)
Beatles version:
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"I Want To Hold Your Hand" knocked "She Loves You" off the top spot on the UK charts, selling over a million copies in advance of its release! While Beatlemania was in full swing in the UK, it hadn't blossomed much yet in the US. Maybe
everybody knows the background of this song, but in case someone wandered into the thread from Mars or Mississippi... An interview with the Beatles and story about their UK success was aired on CBS News on December 10, 1963, and a teenager viewer named Marsha Albert wrote to Carroll James, a DJ in DC, asking him to play something from the Beatles. James secured a copy of the song in advance of its official release and asked Albert onto the show to introduce it, which she did with the now-famous words, "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are The Beatles singing 'I Want To Hold Your Hand.'" Soon the song was being played by DJs around the country, and Capitol advanced its release to accommodate the overwhelming response, selling over a million copies in ten days. It quickly became the first Beatles song to hit #1 in the US, coincidentally being replaced by "She Loves You" after a seven-week run.
It's hard to imagine now how monumental it was at that time for a British band to maintain this kind of presence on the US charts, but it
just didn't happen before that. Even for the Beatles, three singles - "Please Please Me," "From Me To You," and "She Loves You" - had previously been released mostly to yawns. The Beatles were in the midst of their Paris shows when word came in that they had hit #1 in the US, and Paul said they all jumped on Mal Evans and tried to ride him around the hotel room while, as Ringo described it, they “all just started acting like people from Texas, hollering and shouting ‘Yahoo!’” A US tour was quickly organized, including the iconic first
appearance on the Ed Sullivan show that had more than 73 million viewers! There were only like 73.5 million people in the US at that time, meaning more than 99% of Americans were watching, including infants and prisoners. Sure, I totally made that up. But holy hell, 73 million was a lot of viewers in 1963.
As their works tended to be at the time, this was a true collaboration between Paul and John - "eyeball to eyeball" as they termed it. It was so well-crafted by the first time they brought it into the studio that Geoff Emerick thought to himself how much time they must have put into writing and rehearsing it, and though they made 17 takes, the Beatles were on point from the very beginning, sounding polished and confident. George even laid down his guitar licks to everyone's immediate delight. Emerick described the atmosphere during this recording as joyous, such as when they recorded the handclaps: "As I watched the four Beatles gathered around a single mic, clowning around as they added the part, it was apparent to me how much fun they were having, how much they loved doing what they were doing."
That intoxicating energy exudes from this song, as does the dollop of confidence they'd gain with their success in the UK market. The song is best enjoyed for me as just a "feel," to get swept up in the excitement and fever and not think about it too deeply. But since I am still me, I'll note a few things I particularly love. Like several of my highly ranked songs, it starts with an infectious hook and then builds excitement, though this one is unusual in that respect; though it's hard to imagine not knowing what happens after those opening guitar licks, for just a second try to put yourself in the place of someone who's never heard this song before. Where is it going? How do I dance to this? It's only ~5-6 seconds in that the song starts to resolve itself and give you an idea where it's going. Like "She Loves You," it gives me the feeling of having been plopped into the middle of something wondrous that I don't yet quite understand.
The verses then start out normally enough, with some melodic unison singing punctuated by fun handclaps, until we get to that last line, where suddenly there's a break into an extremely high harmony for "I want to hold your
hand," followed by - oh my god it's another reference to a drum fill but here we go - a phenomenal little drum fill. Things turn normal again for most of a line in unison, whew, until again the vocal breaks into an unexpected harmony that descends in a staggered pattern. What just happened here?
I don't know. Luckily, we then go into a mellow bridge, and all is right with the world until
oh my god there are those harmonies again and they're getting kind of loud and aggressively ascending and why are they shouting "I get high!" at me?? Relax, they're actually saying, "I can't hide," though Bob Dylan misheard those lyrics as "I get high" until the Beatles corrected him. (I did
not make that part up.) Then we settle back into some verses and another bridge and everything goes fine because the harmonies are more consistent and we get to that "ha-a-a-a-a-and" part that all seems perfectly normal and is in waltz time and so no, mom, they are not bad boys, they are nice because look they are in suits and flicking their heads around cutely and that was 3/4 time and so you see this is all perfectly safe and you needn't worry and
screeeeaam shrieeeeeek I'm gonna die if I can't make babies with them RIGHT NOW.
Mr. krista: "That’s a song that has gone up in my estimation. I love the chords that open it. I’m not 100% sure the rest of the song lives up to it, since it seems like something overwhelming is going to happen but it’s just 'I want to hold your hand.' I feel like that’s a substitute phrase for something desperate and full of pathos."
Suggested cover: Al Green