'Outrageous' Beatles song that critics called 'awful' but changed music forever
The Beatles made a spectacular impact when they arrived in America in 1964. Having taken the UK and Europe by storm in 1962 and 1963, the band were among the world’s biggest stars, but their first trip to the United States took matters up a level.
Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon arrived at New York’s JFK Airport on February 7 and 5,000 fans were there to greet them. They then made their legendary debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, which was watched by more than 73m people across the United States.
Paul believed it was of vital importance that The Beatles got their first trip to America absolutely right. He told manager Brian Epstein that they should not travel there until they had a number one hit in the US charts.
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‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ became that hit. It was released on November 29 1963 in the UK and then on Boxing Day of that year in the USA, hitting number one on February 1, 1964 - less than a week before The Beatles arrived in New York. It was written at the family home of Jane Asher - Paul McCartney’s girlfriend - which Paul had moved into and replaced his childhood home in Allerton as the writing base for himself and John.
At that point John and Paul wrote very closely together. In the second half of the decade, they tended to do most of their writing independently as they worked on their own ideas (despite all their songs still receiving the joint credit of Lennon-McCartney), but in the early days they wrote in tandem.
Recalling the writing process of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, John told Playboy in 1980: “We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in 'I Want to Hold Your Hand', I remember when we got the chord that made the song.
“We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh you-u-u/ got that something ...' And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that—both playing into each other's noses.”
The song was recorded on October 17, 1963, hitting record store shelves in the UK a month later. At that point, ‘She Loves You’ had returned to the top of the UK charts, following its incredibly successful August release.
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ knocked it off the top spot - the first time in British music history that an act had overtaken itself for the top spot. Critics were not too kind about the track however.
In Esquire, reviewer David Newman stated: "Terrible awful. ...It's the bunk. The Beatles are indistinguishable from a hundred other similar loud and twanging rock-and-roll groups. They aren't talented singers (as Elvis was), they aren't fun (as Elvis was), they aren't anything."
The Associated Press’ Cynthia Lowery said: "Heaven knows we've heard them enough. Getting a radio weather bulletin or time signal has been impossible without running into 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'.”
It did not stop the track from catapulting the band to incredible levels of success in America, however. The band’s US label Capitol planned to release the track in January, in line with their scheduled appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show but American DJs got hold of the track and it became a hit on radio.
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was first played on Washington DC station WWDC by DJ Carroll James, who introduced it by saying: "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are The Beatles singing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'."
Capitol brought the release forward and it sold in huge numbers - 250,000 copies were sold in America in the first three days. It knocked Bobby Vinton’s ‘There! I’ve Said It Again’ off the top of America’s Billboard chart and stayed there for seven weeks.
It was a very important moment and gave Paul his desired US number one before the band arrived stateside. About its success, he said: “‘From Me To You’ was released – a flop in America. ‘She Loves You’ – a big hit in England, big number one in England – a flop in the USA. Nothing until ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.”
The song sparked the so-called British invasion, which saw UK artists dominate the US charts in 1964. The song’s US release was a watershed moment in popular culture and inspired countless artists from America.
About it, Bob Dylan said in 2014: "We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the top ten songs were Beatles songs. 'I Want to Hold Your Hand', all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing.
"Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid. But I just kept it to myself that I really dug them.
"Everybody else thought they were for the teeny-boppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go."
Similarly, Bruce Springsteen told Rolling Stone magazine in 2020: "'I Want To Hold Your Hand' came on the radio in 1964. That was going to change my life because I was going to successfully pick the guitar up and learn how to play.”
"I saw Elvis on TV. When Elvis first hit I was nine or something, I was a little young and I tried to play the guitar but it didn’t work out. I put it away, but the keeper was 1964 and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ on South Street, with my mother driving.
"I immediately demanded she let me out, I ran to the bowling alley, ran down a long neon-lit aisle, down the bowling alley, into the bowling alley, ran to the phone booth, got in the phone booth, immediately called my girl and said ‘have you heard this band called The Beatles?’. After that, it was nothing but rock and roll and guitars."
Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys had a similar reaction to the song on first listen. He said: "I flipped. It was like a shock went through my system." He added: "I immediately knew that everything had changed."
In the six months after their arrival in the US, The Beatles scored five more number ones. They returned to the country for a 32-gig tour later that year and Beatlemania had well and truly taken America by storm.
The critical view of 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' has also changed in the years since it was released. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine's Rob Sheffield said: "The Beatles left behind more great music than anybody can process in a lifetime ... Just check out 'I Want to Hold Your Hand', which explodes out of the speakers with the most passionate singing, drumming, lyrics, guitars, and girl-crazy howls ever – it's no insult to the Beatles to say they never topped this song because nobody else has either ... It's the most joyous three minutes in the history of human noise."