She Loves You

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If I had to describe The Beatles' She Loves You in a single word it would be: EXCITING! It is probably one of the most exciting songs ever crafted — from the explosive opening (with Ringo's drum roll), to musical bursts and explosions throughout, to sudden stops, to shifts between minor and major keys, to constant shifts in speed, and use of the blues scale here and there. . . the song is nothing if not dramatic (including the story in the lyrics) and a non-stop flow of raw energy throughout its brief journey of a little over two minutes. So it has been a sheer delight for me to do this cover of one of my favorite songs.

• The Beatles' signature song
• A rich, unique conglomeration of musical elements
• Call and response
• Other imported musical elements
• The end of the song: major chord, minor chord, and a perfect mashup of major and minor chords
• "You know it's up to you": the song's overarching question mark
• Special thanks for the exquisite karaoke arrangement

The Beatles' signature song. When we talk of a group's "signature song", it usually is their biggest hit, the one everyone thinks of first when they think of that group's music. The Beatles had so many big hits, so many well-known songs, and so many different periods of musical output, that it might seem almost absurd to attempt to talk of their having a single "signature song". And yet. . . If any one song could qualify for that title, it would have to be She Loves You.

Like All My Loving, She Loves You was featured in the Beatles' debut performance on The Ed Sullivan Show (at 5:35 on the video clip) on February 9, 1964. For this reason, it is among the first memories many people have of the Beatles.

Beatlemania first erupted in the U.K. The Beatles had already had several hits there, but it was only with the release of She Loves You that their popularity exploded into "Beatlemania". The single was being bought as fast as manufacturing plants could produce copies! This was the first song that displayed what might be called "the full Beatles sound": the incredible hooks, the jangly guitars, the clever bass lines, the catchy drums and driving beat, the gorgeous harmonies. And it introduced everyone to their restless, musical inventiveness and commitment to high production values (with the help of their creative producer, George Martin, and inventive recording engineers like Norman Smith and Geoff Emerick) that they would display for the rest of their time together.

It's true that I Want To Hold Your Hand was the song — another truly great one! — that opened the door for the Beatles to the United States, and from there, the world. And for this reason, I Want To Hold Your Hand rose meteorically to the #1 position in the charts. But, now that Americans had discovered the Beatles and were eager to get a hold of Beatle music, they also discovered this incredible earlier song — She Loves You — that they had not been aware of (even though it was already released) through a variety of marketing glitches. And so soon after, She Loves You rapidly rose up the charts. It spent four weeks at #2, just behind I Want To Hold Your Hand, before replacing it at the #1 spot for the next two weeks.

Back in the U.K., She Loves You would go on to be the Beatles' bestselling single, out of all their releases (with I Want To Hold Your Hand in the #2 spot). It would also be the top-selling single released by anybody, for fourteen years, until that record was finally surpassed by none other than Paul McCartney, with his (and Wing's) song, Mull of Kintyre.

A rich, unique conglomeration of musical elements. So what makes She Loves You so special? I've mentioned some of the elements: the explosive opening (with Ringo's drum roll), the musical bursts, explosions, and surprises throughout, the sudden stops, the shifts between minor and major keys, the shifts in speed, and the use of the blues scale. The song is a truly amazing conglomeration of seamlessly integrated musical elements, some unique to the Beatles, others that they had imported from other groups and assimilated into their "sound".

Call and response. For example, Paul McCartney's original idea for the song was to have it be a "call-and-response song". Such songs had a long history and often had a very primal, powerful, energizing effect (e.g. African-American work songs). One familiar call-and-response song that actually made it on the pop charts (and could have been a primary inspiration for McCartney) was Harry Belafonte's Day-O (Banana Boat Song), the #15 song of 1957. In such songs, the lead singer would sing the "call", which, in this case, would be the title of the song ("She loves you") and the other singers would then sing the "response" together (which would be "yeah yeah yeah"). That's all a "call and response" song is, and, by itself, as Paul would later say, "We decided it was a crummy idea [by itself]" to make the entire song be a call-and-response. But they kept the idea, and greatly expanded the song from that starting core. (In the end, the call-and-response "She loves you yeah yeah yeah" would end up being the chorus of the complete song.) If you listen carefully to the studio version, you can still that "call-and-response": whenever the words, "She loves you yeah yeah yeah", are sung, John is singing "She loves you" as the call, and then all three singers (John, Paul, and George) sing "yeah yeah yeah" as the response.

I've duplicated that same "single voice / multiple voices" distinction in my cover. Many of the original call-and-response songs had an almost primal feeling. I think some of that was lost "in translation" in the Beatles' song. So I worked hard to restore that "primal feeling" to the opening call and response (nicely enhanced by the opening drum roll), particularly because it then sets a tone for the entire song that follows:

As a singer, I'll add this note: the choice of "yeah yeah yeah" was inspired! So much feeling can be sung through that word because it's just one syllable and ends with a vowel — you can literally wail as you sing "yeah". A humorous story: One person who didn't get this at all was Paul McCartney's father, an accomplished musician in his own right (but I don't believe he was a singer). Paul and John had just finished writing She Loves You (in the same room where Paul's father was watching TV). So the first person they played the song for for was Paul's father. He liked it, but suggested they ditch the "Americanisms" and change the slang words "yeah yeah yeah" to the more British "yes yes yes". Paul: "At which point we collapsed in a heap and said, 'No, Dad, you don't quite get it.'"

While She Loves You would become much more than that simple "call-and-response" component, there is still something very powerful (and different from the usual song) in hearing John's single voice calling out, answered by the three voices. I'm not sure why, but, in live performances, the Beatles decided to have all three singers sing all the words together, so you don't hear that powerful, compelling call and response in their concerts.

Other imported musical elements. Another distinctive element in She Loves You is the high "ooh"s the Beatles sing:
And you know you should be glad
Ooh

These are a direct lift from the Isley Brothers, who sang it in songs like Twist and Shout:

which the Beatles liked so much that they did their own cover of the song.

Buddy Holly was another huge influence on the Beatles. They covered at least thirteen of his songs in live performances in the years before they became big. One of Holly's mannerisms was to take words and extend the last syllable of the word over several syllables, as he does here in That'll Be The Day, as he sings the word, "day":

In She Loves You, you hear the Beatles doing the same thing as they sing the "day" in the word, "yesterday", as "day-ee-ay":

The end of the song: major chord, minor chord, and a perfect mashup of major and minor chords. Pretty much everything I've written about She Loves You up to this point is fairly well-known among students and scholars of the Beatles. But what I'm going to write about next is my personal contribution to "Beatles scholarship": a new understanding of, and appreciation for, the unusual closing "sixth" chord of the song.

The song is in the key of G, and it ends, unusually, with a three-note version of a G6 chord with a high G (sung by Paul), an E (the sixth note, sung by George), and a D (sung by John). Here's me singing that ending:

The ostensible explanation for the final chord is that George Harrison came up with the idea, thinking it sounded really great musically, and the other Beatles agreed with him, being, as they were, always on the lookout for new sounds.

Paul McCartney elaborates: "We rehearsed the end bit of She Loves You and took it to George (Martin). And he just laughed and said, 'Well you can't do the end, of course. . . that sixth. . . it's too like The Andrew Sisters.' We just said, 'Alright, we'll try it without' and we tried it and it wasn't as good. Then he conceded, 'You're right, I guess.'. . . We loved that bit, and we rehearsed it a lot."

But why wasn't the song "as good" without that final sixth chord? Let's start to answer that question with a musical analysis. Here are the chords just preceding the final chord, along with the final chord:

It's worth playing that audio clip of the ending again, while looking at the lyrics and chords above:

We have a very strong major chord (G major, the tonic chord of the song's key); followed by a very strong minor chord (E minor, the tonic chord of the song's relative minor key); followed by a penultimate chord — C major — that is transitional in that it could be followed by either the major or the minor chord; and then — here's the kicker! — ending in the three-note G6 chord (with G, E, and D), which is the perfect "mashup" of the G major chord (containing G and D) and the minor E chord (containing G and E) into a single, combined, major/minor chord.

So we now have a much better sense for why ending the song with the G6 chord is so good from a musical standpoint: because we have the major chord, followed by the minor chord, followed by the chord that perfectly merges the major and the minor chords.

"You know it's up to you": the song's overarching question mark. Now let's dig even deeper, and discover the related, but even more profound reason why that entire final chord sequence was so powerful and perfect as the ending for She Loves You. It has everything to do with the song's story.

She Loves You is a story of two estranged lovers — I'll refer to them as "the guy" and "the gal". The guy has done something terrible (we know not what) that deeply hurt the gal: "She said you hurt her so. She almost lost her mind." Consequently, the guy is now certain that's lost her: "You think you've lost your love."

But then into this picture walks a third person, whom I'll call "the go-between". The go-between is the narrator of the song, and is presumably a friend of both the gal and the guy. He has spoken to the gal, and he now comes to tell the guy what she said. He has great news for the guy: SHE LOVES YOU! Even though she was deeply hurt by him, she has decided that "you're not the hurting kind" — she concludes that he made a one-time mistake — and she loves him too much to end their relationship because of that mistake. So, as the go-between puts it, "She told me what to say: she said she loves you." She explicitly told the go-between to say that to the guy.

So now the ball is in the guy's court. As the song puts it: "You know it's up to you." The gal made herself vulnerable by confessing she still loves the guy. What will he do in response? That's the big question of the song. The song itself doesn't provide a clue as to how the guy is responding to the go-between's enthusiastic good news. Obviously the right next step for the guy would be to "apologize to" the gal, making himself vulnerable to her, as she has done to him. As the go-between puts it: "I think it's only fair." But the guy has a huge personal hurdle to overcome: his pride. He's the kind of guy who has a real resistance to saying "I'm sorry". The go-between tries to get the guy to reflect on the price of that pride: "Pride can hurt you too." Is the guy willing to give up the relationship with the gal because of that pride? That's the huge question that remains unanswered at the end of the song. The go-between is recommending that the guy just swallow his pride and apologize to the gal. But will he?

Now let's have an "aha moment" by putting all the pieces together: both the story elements and the music elements. Musically, major keys are generally associated with what is happy, upbeat, and positive. Just so, minor keys are generally associated with that is sad, depressed, and negative. So in the final closing sequence of the song, the G major chord accompanies the words "be glad", anticipating the outcome where the guy does swallow his pride, and the guy and the gal are happy, together again. Then the E minor chord plays, envisioning the other possible outcome, where the guy is an idiot, lets his pride get in the way, and chooses to never reconcile with the girl. Then comes that final, exquisitely perfect G6 chord: it combines the G major chord and the E minor chord, signifying the fact that, at the close of the song, we really don't know which choice the guy is going to make. Thus, the G6 chord is an absolutely brilliant musical representation of the huge question mark at the close of the song.

I would never suggest the Beatles consciously thought out all of this as they championed their use of the final G6 chord — they clearly did not, or they would have mentioned it. But I am proposing that, on some subconscious level, they were aware of this, and that's why the ending sounded so good to them, and why they fought so hard to keep that final G6 chord.

Special thanks for the exquisite karaokoe arrangement. My special thanks to Ryohei Kanayama, who has created exceptionally authentic instrumental arrangements for all of the Beatles' songs.