A Beautiful Beatles Track From 1964: “And I Love Her”

“And I Love Her” has long been one of my very favorite songs by the most popular band of all time. I’m writing today to share a close look at this beautiful ballad for those who enjoy it as much as I do.

The song was included on side one of The Beatles 3rd album A Hard Days Night. This this great album is, of course, the soundtrack to the film by the same name. A majority of Beatles lovers consider it to be a huge step forward and the greatest of the first 4 LPs. It’s also the only album to contain only songs by John Lennon & Paul McCartney (mostly because later albums contain tunes by lead guitarist George Harrison as well.)

It is true that in some ways “And I Love Her” is a very simple, very repetitive song and one could certainly argue that the lyrics are pretty cliche. But the melody is beautiful enough and there are enough little musical ideas that the song is still a great one in-spite of these apparent weaknesses.

Something that’s really cool about this recording is how it goes into 4 different keys. This is because it flips back and forth between major and its relative minor throughout the song and then during the tasteful guitar solo the key goes up a semitone and finishes there when the vocals come back in.

On the Anthology CDs we hear an earlier version of this song that employs a full band sound and doesn’t have the excellent guitar riff that helps make the final version memorable. The difference between this early version and the official version shows how a different arrangement and some cool riffs can help make a song work.

As a nice final touch the song ends on the major version of the relative minor “1″ chord. In other words instead of the expected D minor it ends on a D major. The Beatles were brilliant at adding these subtle touches to their songs and that helped to set them apart from most other popular music.

A Hard Day’s Night can be heard in remastered stereo and mono with The Beatles in Stereo CD Box Set and The Beatles in Mono CD Box Set.