The Beatles managed to conquer the pop charts like no one before or since them. In fact, all these years later, the Fab Four still hold the record for the most number one singles in the US singles chart, with 20. Only Mariah Carey has even come close.
In the UK charts, only Elvis Presley’s 21 number ones can better The Beatles’ 18, but these 21 include three posthumous re-releases and a remix. Even the king of rock and roll could only surpass the Liverpudlians 27 years after his death.
With that, of course, 1 is even the name of The Beatles’ ‘greatest hits’ album, since all of its 27 tracks reached number one on either side of the Atlantic. What other artist could boast such chart-topping riches?
Virtually everything the group released between 1963 and 1970 went to number one. Everything, that is, except a few chart anomalies. A handful of their singles, including some absolute classics, didn’t quite make the top spot in Britain or the US.
Bookending Beatlemania
At the end of their recording session for the song ‘Please Please Me’ on November 26th, 1962, producer George Martin told The Beatles they had just recorded their first number one hit. Martin’s prediction proved to be more or less correct, as the song soon took the top spot on the singles charts in the UK.
Technically, however, the record books don’t count this single among the band’s list of UK number ones. It only reached the number two spot in Record Retailer, which is now recognised as the only official singles chart of the 1960s, even though no one saw it as such at the time.
‘Please Please Me’ was still unquestionably a big hit for The Beatles and consequently lent its name to their debut album. The record was a smash hit, breaking sales records, claiming the number one spot in the UK album charts for 30 consecutive weeks, and kickstarting Beatlemania in Britain.
This phenomenon soon made the group the most prominent recording artists in the world, leading to sell-out tours with concerts throughout which thousands of teenage fans screamed deliriously. The Beatles basically invented stadium rock by performing to 55,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York in 1965.
After ‘Please Please Me’, they had a string of 11 successive number one singles in the UK, scoring 12 number ones in the US during the same period. And then, as quickly as it had started, Beatlemania was over.
A set of chastening events during their 1965 and 1966 world tours had turned the band off performing live. Their final ticketed concert on August 29th, 1966, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco was followed by a retreat into the studio, where they would produce some of the most groundbreaking music ever aired on commercial radio.
But their experimental new direction didn’t produce quite so many screams among their fans. Their first single after quitting touring, the double A-side ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ / ‘Penny Lane’, didn’t quite make it to the UK single chart’s number one spot. They were pipped to the post by Engelbert Humperdinck. In the US, where double A-sides were counted as two separate songs, only ‘Penny Lane’ reached the top of the charts.
It should be noted that this chart anomaly occurred despite the single outselling Humperdinck’s song ‘Release Me’ by a ratio of almost two-to-one. Ludicrously, UK chart rules at the time meant double A-sides had their sales figures measured per track, meaning they had to sell twice as many copies as a single A-side to chart in the same position.
Nevertheless, during The Beatles’ Anthology documentary series, drummer Ringo Starr later described the band’s perceived failure to grab the number one spot with their single as “a relief”. The group was sick of all the attention their music’s commercial performance received and felt that the so-called “failure” would allow them to focus on the music they wanted to make.
There are numerous other Beatles songs released as singles both during and after their recording career that didn’t make it to number one either in the UK or the US or in the other markets where they were released. Their much-loved recording of the Isley Brothers’ song ‘Twist and Shout’, for instance, topped out at number two in the US. But it was never intended as a single when the group recorded it.
‘Please Please Me’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ remain the only two songs by The Beatles recorded as singles which didn’t reach number one either in the UK or the US, according to official records. And the record books have a case to answer, even for these two songs. By today’s standards of measurement, it’s almost certain that both of them would be considered chart-toppers too.
