The Beatles were masters of many things, but the real magic behind their wizardry was the humble backbone of proficient pop compositions.
In a recent interview with The Lemon Twigs, the brothers were happy to tell us, “In terms of arranging a pop song, The Beatles are one of the best at it – if not the best.” Proving that their craftsmanship remains unrivalled even half a century later. The Fab Four simply knew how to turn a melody into a hit.
While there are myriad factors that go into this canny knack of catchiness, one of the most glaringly obvious has often gone overlooked and rarely ever imitated. On countless occasions within their back catalogue, the band simply begin a song with the title of the track. Unashamedly, the band will belt out “she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah”, “love, love me do”, and croon “Yesterday” in the very first line with a pointed punchiness.
This gives their songs a sense of instant recognition. From the moment they begin, you know where you are at with the tunes, and you feel at home with them. When you talk to composers about songwriting compositions, they will analyse the movements of a melody in terms of an emotional journey around the opening note—this opening note is the figurative safehouse of the song.
Well, The Beatles cunningly doubled down on that and used this same musical principle in a lyrical sense—you begin at home, in a familiar place. This is ideal for a radio-friendly hit where a sense of familiarity helps to enamour you. When they open with a catchy melody and utter “It’s been a hard day’s night”, there is no notion of ‘waiting’; you’re not yearning for a chorus or a hook and drifting towards disinterest, you are instantly grabbed and now just happy to see where the boys take it.
This wasn’t something that the band ever ditched when they moved into more experimental climes either. Their final record, Let It Be, begins with the same trick on ‘Two of Us’ with the line “two of us riding nowhere”. If anything, this simple trick provided a launchpad that allowed them to experiment in the first place to see just how far away from home they could get.
Interestingly, the band never seemed to mention this tenet of their songwriting, perhaps because, in truth, it doesn’t even seem to have been noticed. But from ‘Here Comes the Sun’ to ‘Help!’ and countless other classics, it is a trick that gets their poppier numbers off on the right foot. It is a mark of everything else they do thereafter that the method never became noticeably obtuse. You simply hear “In Penny Lane” and feel assured that you’re about to be basked in another confident hit.
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