A Hard Day's Night (album)
A Hard Day's Night | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 10 July 1964 | |||
Recorded | 29 January – 2 June 1964 | |||
Studio |
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Genre | ||||
Length | 30:11 | |||
Label | Parlophone | |||
Producer | George Martin | |||
The Beatles chronology | ||||
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Singles from A Hard Day's Night | ||||
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A Hard Day's Night is the third
The album includes the song "A Hard Day's Night", with its distinctive opening chord,[4] and "Can't Buy Me Love", both transatlantic number-one singles for the band. Several of the songs feature George Harrison playing a Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar, a sound that was influential on the Byrds and other groups in the emerging folk rock and jangle pop genres.
Recording
Shortly after the release of With the Beatles (1963), the Beatles were at EMI Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris on 29 January 1964 for their first recording session outside of London. Here, they recorded German-language versions of their two most recent singles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You", titled "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" and "Sie liebt dich", respectively. According to their producer, George Martin, this was done as "they couldn't sell large quantities of records [in Germany] unless they were sung in German".[5] Also recorded—in English—was Paul McCartney's "Can't Buy Me Love", which was completed in only four takes.[5] Shortly afterward, the band gave their first live performance in the United States on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February. They gave more US performances before returning to the United Kingdom on 22 February.[6]
The Beatles were set to begin filming their first major feature film on 2 March 1964. According to historian
On 1 March 1964, the Beatles recorded three songs in three hours: "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" for the film, featuring Harrison on lead vocal; a cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally"; and Lennon's "I Call Your Name", which was originally given to Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas the previous year.[8] Mono and stereo mixing was carried out over the following two weeks. The "Can't Buy Me Love" / "You Can't Do That" single was released on 16 March and topped charts worldwide.[8] Taking a break for filming,[9] drummer Ringo Starr coined the phrase "a hard day's night", providing the film with its title. Lennon and McCartney wrote a song based on the title, which was recorded at EMI on 16 April and mixed four days later.[10]
On 1 June, with the film completed and the band returning from holidays, the Beatles returned to EMI, recording the remaining songs for the tie-in LP, with outtakes appearing on the Long Tall Sally EP.[11] Covers of Carl Perkins' "Matchbox", with Starr on lead vocals, and Larry Williams' "Slow Down", appeared on the EP, while Lennon's "I'll Cry Instead" and "I'll Be Back" appeared on the LP. The following day on 2 June, the band completed Lennon's "Any Time at All" and "When I Get Home", and McCartney's "Things We Said Today".[11] The band spent the remainder of June and July touring internationally.[12]
Content
Musically, A Hard Day's Night eschews the rock and roll cover songs of the band's previous albums for a predominantly pop sound.[13] Sputnikmusic's Dave Donnelly observes "short, peppy" pop songs characterised by layered vocals, immediate choruses, and understated instrumentation.[14] According to Pitchfork's Tom Ewing, the lack of rock and roll covers allows listeners to "take the group's new sound purely on its own modernist terms", with audacious "chord choices", powerful harmonies, "gleaming" guitar, and "Northern" harmonica.[13] Music journalist Robert Christgau writes that Lennon–McCartney's songs were "more sophisticated musically" than before.[15] It also features Harrison playing a Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar, a sound that was influential on the Byrds and other bands in the folk rock explosion of 1965.[16][17]
Side one of the LP contains the songs from the film soundtrack. Side two contains songs written for, but not included in, the film, although a 1980s re-release of the film includes a prologue before the opening credits with "I'll Cry Instead" on the soundtrack.[18] The title of the album and film was the accidental creation of Starr.[19] According to Lennon in a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine: "I was going home in the car and [film director] Dick Lester suggested the title, 'Hard Day's Night' from something Ringo had said. I had used it in In His Own Write, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny ... just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.'"[20]
A Hard Day's Night is the first Beatles album to feature entirely original compositions, and the only one where all the songs were written by Lennon–McCartney.
Critical reception and legacy
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [28] |
Paste | 100/100[29] |
Pitchfork | 9.7/10[13] |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [30] |
Sputnikmusic | 4.5/5[14] |
According to music critic Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic:
George Harrison's resonant 12-string electric guitar leads [on A Hard's Day's Night] were hugely influential; the movie helped persuade
Lovin' Spoonful, and others to mount a challenge of their own with self-penned material that owed a great debt to Lennon–McCartney.[31]
In his book Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé, Bob Stanley identifies A Hard Day's Night as the album that best captures the band's early-career appeal. He writes:
If you had to explain the Beatles' impact to a stranger, you'd play them the soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night. The songs, conceived in a hotel room in a spare couple of weeks between up-ending the British class system and conquering America, were full of bite and speed. There was adventure, knowingness, love, and abundant charm.[32]
A Hard Day's Night was included in the list of "100 Essential Rock Albums" compiled by musicologists Charlie Gillett and Simon Frith for ZigZag magazine in 1975, and is one of the "Treasure Island albums" featured in Greil Marcus's 1979 book Stranded.[citation needed] In 2000, Q magazine placed A Hard Day's Night at number 5 on its list "The 100 Greatest British Albums Ever".[33] That same year, it appeared at number 22 in Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums.[34] In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked it 307th on the magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[35] In the 2020 revision, it rose to number 263.[36]
A Hard Day's Night has also appeared in critics' lists of the best albums of all time published by the
Reissues
On 26 February 1987, A Hard Day's Night was officially released on compact disc in mono, along with Please Please Me, With the Beatles, and Beatles for Sale. Having been available only as an import in the US in the past, the 13 track UK version of the album was also issued in the US on LP and cassette on 21 July 1987. Stereo mixes of "A Hard Day's Night", "Can't Buy Me Love", and "And I Love Her" had been made available on the first compact disc issue of 1962–1966 in 1993. Most of the rest of the tracks appeared in stereo on compact disc for the first time with the release of the box set The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 in 2004.
On 9 September 2009, a remastered version of this album was released and was the first time the album appeared in stereo on compact disc in its entirety. This album is also included in The Beatles: Stereo Box Set. A remastered mono version of the original UK album was part of The Beatles in Mono box set.[37]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Lennon–McCartney
No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
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1. | "A Hard Day's Night" | Lennon with McCartney | 2:34 |
2. | "I Should Have Known Better" | Lennon | 2:43 |
3. | "If I Fell" | Lennon and McCartney | 2:19 |
4. | "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" | Harrison | 1:56 |
5. | "And I Love Her" | McCartney | 2:30 |
6. | "Tell Me Why" | Lennon | 2:09 |
7. | "Can't Buy Me Love" | McCartney | 2:12 |
Total length: | 16:23 |
No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
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1. | "Any Time at All" | Lennon | 2:11 |
2. | "I'll Cry Instead" | Lennon | 1:44 |
3. | "Things We Said Today" | McCartney | 2:35 |
4. | "When I Get Home" | Lennon | 2:17 |
5. | "You Can't Do That" | Lennon | 2:35 |
6. | "I'll Be Back" | Lennon | 2:24 |
Total length: | 13:46 |
North American release
A Hard Day's Night | ||||
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Soundtrack album by | ||||
Released | 26 June 1964 | |||
Recorded | 29 January – 4 June 1964 | |||
Studio |
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instrumental | ||||
Length | 29:47 | |||
Label | United Artists | |||
Producer | George Martin | |||
The Beatles North American chronology | ||||
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The Beatles United States chronology | ||||
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Singles from A Hard Day's Night | ||||
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The American version of the album was released on 26 June 1964 by United Artists Records in both mono and stereo, the fourth Beatles album in the United States. The album went to number one on the Billboard album chart, spending 14 weeks there, the longest run of any album that year.[38] United Artists rushed the album into stores over a month before the film's US premiere; as a result, the Beatles had both the number-one album and number-one single in the country when A Hard Day's Night opened on 11 August 1964.
All seven songs from the film, the first side of the UK album, were featured along with "I'll Cry Instead", which, although written for the film, was cut at the last minute. The American version also included four orchestral instrumental versions of Lennon and McCartney songs
While the stereo version of the album included the instrumental tracks in true stereo, the Beatles' own recordings appeared as electronically rechannelled stereo recordings made from the mono releases. The 1980 Capitol Records reissue used the same master tape as the original United Artists LP release in fake stereo, despite the availability of several tracks with official true stereo remixes. True stereo versions of most of the songs had been issued on the Capitol album Something New, released in July 1964. "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better" finally appeared in stereo on the 1970 Apple Records compilation Hey Jude. The song "A Hard Day's Night" did not appear in true stereo in the US until the 1982 Capitol compilation album Reel Music. In 2014, the American version of the "A Hard Day's Night" album was released on CD individually and in a boxed set of all the other US Beatles albums to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles first US visit. This CD reissue features all of the songs in both true stereo and mono mixes.
In 2000, the 1964 North American release of A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles on the United Artists label was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[39]
Track listing
No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
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1. | " Tell Me Why" | Lennon | 2:10 |
3. | "I'll Cry Instead" | Lennon | 2:06 |
4. | "I Should Have Known Better" | instrumental | 2:10 |
5. | "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" | Harrison | 1:59 |
6. | "And I Love Her" | instrumental | 3:46 |
Total length: | 14:44 |
No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "I Should Have Known Better" | Lennon | 2:44 |
2. | "If I Fell" | Lennon and McCartney | 2:22 |
3. | "And I Love Her" | McCartney | 2:29 |
4. | "Ringo's Theme (This Boy)" | instrumental | 3:10 |
5. | "Can't Buy Me Love" | McCartney | 2:12 |
6. | "A Hard Day's Night" | instrumental | 2:06 |
Total length: | 15:03 |
Charts and certifications
Chart performance
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CertificationsOriginal release
North American release
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Personnel
Sources:[61][62][63]
The Beatles
- John Lennon – vocals; acoustic, rhythm and lead guitars; harmonica; piano on "Things We Said Today"
- Paul McCartney – vocals; bass guitar; piano on "When I Get Home"; cowbell on "You Can't Do That"
- George Harrison – vocals; lead (six- and twelve-string) and acoustic guitars
- Ringo Starr – drums, percussion
Additional personnel
- George Martin – piano on "Tell Me Why", production, orchestrations of instrumentals for film and American LP
See also
References
- ^ World – Volume 2 – Page 61, 1973. "[on Help! and A Hard Day's Night], the soundtrack – gone – rock album is a marketing ideal that is passed off on the buying public with objectionable regularity and has already begun to backfire."
- ^ Spignesi & Lewis 2004, p. 140.
- ^ Hejeski, Nancy J. (2014). The Beatles: Here, There and Everywhere. Simon & Schuster.
- ^ Hook 2005.
- ^ a b Lewisohn 1988, pp. 38–39.
- ^ Lewisohn 1992, pp. 137, 146–147.
- ^ a b c Lewisohn 1988, pp. 39–40.
- ^ a b Lewisohn 1988, pp. 40–41.
- ^ Gould 2007, pp. 230–232.
- ^ Lewisohn 1988, pp. 40–43.
- ^ a b Lewisohn 1988, pp. 44–45.
- ^ Lewisohn 1992, pp. 161–165.
- ^ a b c Ewing, Tom (8 September 2009). "The Beatles A Hard Day's Night Album Review". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 10 December 2013.
- ^ a b de Sylvia, Dave (24 September 2005). "The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night Sputnik Music review". Sputnik Music. Archived from the original on 15 July 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-393-04700-4.
- ISBN 978-1-250-05962-8.
- ISBN 978-1-61713-573-6.
- ^ Eder, Bruce. "Extracts from the Album "A Hard Day's Night" – The Beatles". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 21 August 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
- ^ Badman 2001, p. 93.
- ^ Sheff 2000, pp. 174–175.
- ^ Lewisohn 1988, p. 47.
- ^ Miles 1997, p. 163.
- ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "A Hard Day's Night – The Beatles". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 30 May 2012. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
- ^ Klosterman, Chuck (8 September 2009). "Chuck Klosterman Repeats The Beatles". The A.V. Club. Chicago. Archived from the original on 22 May 2013. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
- ^ "Maxim". blender.com. Archived from the original on 9 September 2009.
- Consequence of Sound. Archived from the originalon 4 April 2014. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
- ^ McCormick, Neil (4 September 2009). "The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night, review". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 6 October 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-19-531373-4.
- ^ "The Beatles: The Long and Winding Repertiore". Paste. 5 August 2009. Archived from the original on 23 October 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2013.
- ^ "The Beatles – Album Guide – Rolling Stone Music". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 4 April 2014.
- ^ Unterberger, Richie (2009). "The Beatles Biography". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 3 November 2019. Retrieved 25 September 2009.
- ^ Stanley 2014, p. 79.
- ^ Kelso, Paul (2 May 2000). "Beatles still rule the rockers' roost". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 March 2020. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
- ^ Kelso, Paul (4 September 2000). "Radiohead challenge Fab Four as Bends leaves Sgt Pepper in the cold". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 October 2019. Retrieved 11 November 2019.
- ^ "500 Greatest Albums of All Time: The Beatles, 'A Hard Day's Night'". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 14 July 2012. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
- ^ "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 22 September 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
- ^ Reuters 2009.
- ^ Whitburn 2001, p. 1178.
- ^ "GRAMMY HALL OF FAME AWARD". www.grammy.com. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
- ISBN 0-646-44439-5.
- GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ISBN 951-31-2503-3.
- ^ "Beatles" > "Albums". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
- ^ "The Beatles Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. 16 March 2021. Archived from the original on 16 March 2021. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
- ^ a b "Dutchcharts.nl – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Austriancharts.at – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Ultratop.be – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Ultratop.be – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Italiancharts.com – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Charts.nz – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Portuguesecharts.com – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Spanishcharts.com – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Swedishcharts.com – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "Swisscharts.com – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^ "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 2009 Albums" (PDF). Australian Recording Industry Association. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
- ^ "New Zealand album certifications – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Recorded Music NZ. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
- ^ "British album certifications – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
- ^ "Canadian album certifications – The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night". Music Canada. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
- ^ "American album certifications – The Beatles – Hard Day_s Night". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
- ^ Guesdon & Margotin 2014, p. 149.
- ^ Everett 2001.
- ^ MacDonald 1994, p. 90.
Sources
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- Gould, Jonathan (2007). Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-0-307-35338-2.
- Guesdon, Jean-Michel; Margotin, Philippe (2014). All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Beatles Release. Running Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-1-60376-371-4. Archivedfrom the original on 2 May 2021. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
- Hook, Chris (2 May 2005). "The "A Hard Day's Night" Chord – Rock's Holy Grail". Archived from the original on 31 October 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-517-57066-1.
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- ISBN 0805027807.
- Spignesi, Stephen J.; Lewis, Michael (2004). Here, There, and Everywhere: The 100 Best Beatles Songs. New York: ISBN 978-1-57912-369-7.
...after the unabashed more-or-less traditional pop rock of A Hard Day's Night and Help!...
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