When The Beatles came on the scene they gave the world something it had never heard before. Their sound had influences from artists like Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, but was also unique. They weren’t afraid to experiment and give the world something it had never heard before – like putting a quiet vocal in front of a loud track on “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
And, they’ve influenced just about every rockstar you can think of from Prince to Kurt Cobain. Seriously, you’d be hard-pressed to find an artist who wasn’t influenced by them.
It’s hard to pull together a list of the top Beatles songs, because even their B side songs are epic. From Please Please Me to Let it Be, these are some of the best Beatles songs to listen to. Here is our top list.
20. Here Comes the Sun
Written by George Harrison, “Here Comes the Sun” opened the second side of Abbey Road with a burst of joy. Even the highly competitive Lennon and McCartney had to grant Harrison newfound respect. “I think that until now, until this year, our songs have been better than George’s,” McCartney said to Lennon during a break in the Abbey Road sessions. “Now, this year his songs are at least as good as ours.”
19. Can’t Buy Me Love
By the middle of March 1964, the Beatles were the biggest band in the world, responsible for an astonishing 60 percent of the American singles market. With pre-orders of more than 3 million copies, “Can’t Buy Me Love” catapulted the Beatles to a new level of fame. McCartney later said “Can’t Buy Me Love” was “my attempt to write in a bluesy mode.” But the song is much closer to the group’s primary influences: the bright gallop of uptempo Motown and brisk Fifties rockabilly.
18. Please Please Me
It was a combination of Bing Crosby and Roy Orbison.” That was Lennon’s description of the inspiration for “Please Please Me,” which would become the first Beatles single to reach Number One on the U.K. charts.
The Beatles knew they had broken new ground. “We lifted the tempo, and suddenly there was that fast Beatles spirit,” said McCartney. Lennon later said that “by the time the session came around, we were so happy we couldn’t get it recorded fast enough.” Starr’s steady, propulsive backbeat led Martin to concede he had been wrong about the drummer’s skills.
17 All You Need is Love
The song was Britain’s contribution to Our World, the first live global television link, for which the band were filmed performing it at EMI Studios in London. The program was broadcast via satellite and seen by an audience of over 400 million in 25 countries. Lennon’s lyrics were deliberately simplistic, to allow for the show’s international audience, and captured the utopian ideals associated with the Summer of Love. The single topped sales charts in Britain, the United States and many other countries, and became an anthem for the counterculture‘s embrace of flower power philosophy. It deserves to be listed as one of the top Beatles songs.
16. Eleanor Rigby
There are conflicting stories of how McCartney came up with the name for the title character. According to McCartney, he combined the first name of Eleanor Bron, the lead actress in Help!, with a last name taken from a sign he had seen in Bristol. “Eleanor Rigby” continued the transformation of the Beatles from a mainly rock and pop-oriented act to a more experimental, studio-based band. With a double string quartet arrangement by George Martin and lyrics providing a narrative on loneliness.
15. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
Lennon has stated that this song was about his affairs with different women while on tour. “I was trying to write about an affair without letting me wife know I was writing about an affair. I was writing from my experiences, girls’ flats, things like that.” It was one of their more introspective song for the time, and heavily influenced by Bob Dylan.
14. She Loves You
Written in their tour van, the song signaled a new level of sophistication for the band as songwriters and arrangers. “She Loves You” opens with the chorus instead of the first verse for extra punch.
13. Ticket to Ride
“Ticket to Ride” was the first Beatles recording to break the three-minute mark, and Lennon packed the track with wild mood swings. His singing and lyrics teeter between ambivalence and despair in the verses.
12. Help
“Help!” was written to be the title track to the Fab Four’s second movie — a madcap action comedy. Lennon originally wrote “Help!” as a mid-tempo ballad, but the Beatles decided to amp up the arrangement in the studio, with Harrison’s surf-guitar licks, Starr’s thundering tom-toms and the reverse call-and-response vocals that would become the song’s trademark.
11. Revolution
What makes this one of the top Beatles songs? In the spring of 1968, the Vietnam War raged on, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and strikes and student protests in Paris brought the French government to its knees. When the Beatles — who had long been outspoken critics of the Vietnam War — hit Abbey Road Studios to make the White Album at the end of May, the first thing they recorded was “Revolution,” which was also the first explicitly political song the band ever released.
10. Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds
Lennon has insisted that “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is not a drug song. The inspiration was actually a picture that his four-year-old son, Julian, painted of Lucy O’Donnell, the girl who sat next to him at school. The song was written during a time when Lennon was depressed from a collapsing marriage and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was an image of hope.
9. A Hard Day’s Night
“A Hard Day’s Night” opens with the most famous chord in all of rock & roll: a radiant burst of 12-string guitar evoking the chaos and euphoria of Beatlemania at its height. It has forever cemented its place in time as one of the top Beatles songs.
8. Strawberry Fields Forever
After finishing the song on a Spanish beach, Lennon returned to England and played it for the rest of the band. As engineer Geoff Emerick recalled, “There was a moment of stunned silence, broken by Paul, who in a quiet, respectful tone said simply, ‘That is absolutely brilliant.’”
7. A Day in the Life
This song was far too intense musically and emotionally for regular radio play at the time it was made. It wasn’t really until after Lennon’s murder, that “A Day in the Life” became recognized as one of the band’s masterworks. In this song, as in so many other ways, the Beatles were way ahead of everyone else.
6. Hey Jude
“Hey Jude” was inspired by John and Cynthia Lennon’s five-year-old son, Julian. His parents were in the middle of a divorce and the song was meant to console him during that time. “Hey Jude” was also the first release on the group’s Apple Records label. It spent nine weeks at Number One, holding the top spot longer than any other Beatles song. This is definitely one of the top Beatles songs.
5. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
George Harrison’s first truly great Beatles song, began as an accident. The rest of the band didn’t initially like the track, but Harrison came up with a brilliant idea. He was giving friend Eric Clapton a ride into London, when he asked the Cream guitarist to play on it. Once the band heard his version, the rest is history.
4. Come Together
This song actually originated as a campaign slogan! LSD guru Timothy Leary was running for governor of California against Ronald Reagan in the 1970 election. His slogan was “Come Together” and Lennon ended up turning into the hit song.
3. Let it Be
Channeling the church-born soul of Aretha Franklin, Paul McCartney started writing “Let It Be” in 1968, during the White Album sessions. Phil Spector did the LP mix of the title track and is credited with producing it, although it’s mixed from the same tape as the single.
2. Want to Hold Your Hand
When the joyous, high-end racket of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” first blasted across the airwaves, America was still reeling from the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” changed everything. The single was most Americans’ first exposure to the songwriting magic of Lennon and McCartney, who composed it in the London home of the parents of McCartney’s girlfriend, Jane Asher.
1. Yesterday
The song began as a dream for McCartney. “It fell out of bed,” Paul McCartney once said about the origins of “Yesterday.” “I had a piano by my bedside, and I must have dreamed it, because I tumbled out of bed and put my hands on the piano keys and I had a tune in my head. It was just all there, a complete thing. I couldn’t believe it. It came too easy.”
