The Beatles ripped up the rulebook in many ways.
One of these was that, after their first album was rushed together to cash in on their first couple of hits, they decided not to put singles on albums, or to issue album tracks as singles. The reason for this was simple: they felt it was unfair on fans to have to buy the same song twice.
They didn’t stick to the rule religiously – for example, both their movie soundtrack albums (1964's A Hard Day’s Night and Help! from the following year) feature singles, as they were put out to promote the films.
But had they wanted to, they could easily have doubled their total of number one hit singles. Here, we break down which songs they could have used – it’s hard to imagine any of them not hitting the top spot.
The Beatles themselves only really controlled what was released in their native UK. Other territories could issue their songs however they chose, so for the purposes of this article, we only focus on what was (and wasn’t) a single in their home country.
1. Twist & Shout (1963)
Most people would be forgiven for thinking that ‘Twist & Shout’ was a Beatles original, but they’d be wrong. This staple of their live show was actually a cover version of the 1962 Isley Brothers hit – itself a cover of a 1961 recording by a group called The Top Notes – produced by Phil Spector.
And although The Beatles’ UK and US record labels (Parlophone and Capitol respectively) never issued ‘Twist & Shout’ as a single, Chicago’s VeeJay label had picked up the rights to some of their 1963 recordings after Capitol had initially passed on the band. And so it did come out as a single in the US on a subsidiary of VeeJay, where it was one of five Beatles songs in the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1964.
2. I Saw Her Standing There (1963)
This rocking 12-bar original is one of Paul McCartney’s favourite of his own songs. Written in late 1962, Paul came up with the idea for the song, which he then worked on with John Lennon at Paul’s family home on Forthlin Road, Liverpool – today a National Trust property.
With a spirited ‘One, two, three, FOUR’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ kick starts their debut album, Please Please Me (1963), and became a firm favourite in their live set.
As an interesting point for trivia fans is that both Lennon and McCartney have performed it live with Elton John – Paul at the 1986 Prince’s Trust Rock Gala at Wembley Arena, bolstered by Eric Clapton, and John when he joined Elton on stage at Madison Square Gardens, New York City, in 1974.
3. All My Loving (1964)
On 9 February 1964, The Beatles’ appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in the US, performing to a reported 73 million viewers. The song they chose to open the show? ‘All My Loving’. Despite not being a single in the UK or the US, the group clearly felt it was strong enough to kick off their invasion of the US – and history suggests this was a good call.
‘All My Loving’ is one of the very few occasions in his career that Paul McCartney wrote the words first, later adding music. The band were on the road at the time, as he told author and friend Barry Miles in Many Years From Now (1997):
‘We arrived at the gig and I remember being in one of these big backstage areas and there was a piano there so I’d got my instrument. I didn’t have a guitar, it was probably with our road manager, and I remember working the tune out to it on the piano. It was a good show song, it worked well live.’
4. And I Love Her (1964)
This Paul McCartney song remains one of the group’s most enduring love songs. It sounds simple, but the complexities of the composition reveal themselves to any musician who tries to play it. Suspense is created from the off by not beginning with the root chord, but gradually working its way back to the comfort of home through the haunting melody.
Key to its success is the simple guitar riff, created on the hoof by George Harrison. As McCartney recalled in his 2021 The Lyrics book, ‘We were about to record it, and [producer George Martin] said, “I think it would be good with an introduction.” And I swear, right there and then, George Harrison went, “Well how about this?” and he played the opening riff, which is such a hook; the song is nothing without it.’
5. Eight Days A Week (1964)
It feels impossible that this wasn’t a single – it’s so catchy and universal, and even its title has become part of our everyday language. The song’s origin is as simple as the song itself – on a trip from his London home out to John Lennon’s house in the stockbroker belt, Paul struck up conversation with his driver. Paul asked if he’d been busy, to which the driver replied that he’d been working eight days a week. Paul had the title for the song before even getting to his partner’s front door.
Although not a single in the UK, it was released as a single in the US, where it topped the charts.
6. The Night Before (1965)
This call-and-response rocker from Paul McCartney soundtracked one of the many seemingly random scenes in their second movie, Help! – in this case a recording session on Salisbury Plain under fire from enemy tanks.
In more modern times, the opportunity to release a single with a ready made video would be too great to resist, but as the Beatles wouldn’t really invent the pop music video for another year or so yet, that was a moot point.
Paul did confess at the time that the group were torn between releasing ‘The Night Before’ or ‘Ticket To Ride’ as their next single and, in hindsight, probably made the right call. But had they released both, they could easily have had two number ones on their hands instead of one.
7. Yesterday (1965)
If push came to shove, ‘Yesterday’ may well be the defining song of the 20th century – polls by BBC Radio 2, Rolling Stone magazine and MTV at the turn of the millennium certainly thought so anyway.
And yet it was never released as a single – at least not in their home country anyway. The subject was discussed, and with Paul being the only Beatle to feature on the song, there was even a conversation from their management about issuing it as a Paul McCartney solo single. But The Beates were having none of it.
As Paul explained in The Beatles’ Anthology, ‘I wouldn’t have put it out as a solo Paul McCartney record. We never entertained those ideas. It was sometimes tempting; people would flatter us: “Oh, you know you should get out front,” or, “You should put a solo record out.”
'But we always said no. In fact, we didn’t release ‘Yesterday’ as a single in England at all, because we were a little embarrassed about it – we were a rock ‘n’ roll band.’
8. Drive My Car (1965)
The opening track of Rubber Soul (1965) sounds straight out of the stable of Stax Records, the Memphis soul label so beloved by British musicians in the mid-1960s. A killer guitar riff is countered by a melodic bassline, driven in turn by a thumping beat (cowbell motoring the song along). The tongue-in-cheek ‘beep beep ‘n’ beep beep yeah’ refrain is a cracking secondary hook, and, as with ‘Day Tripper’, there’s a definite knowingness about the sexually charged analogy in the lyric.
But it wasn’t always there. Initially, Paul’s song had a chorus about giving golden rings, which Lennon (quite rightly) decided wasn’t up to scratch.
George Harrison’s admitted that his guitar solo was inspired by Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’. If only Otis had returned the favour by covering ‘Drive My Car’ – what a single that would have made!
9. Nowhere Man (1965)
Taken from 1965's Rubber Soul album, ‘Nowhere Man’’s chiming guitars and soaring harmonies would have made for a great single release in 1965. But the introspective lyrics reveal this as a deeply personal song from Lennon, looking at where he was in his life and marriage, and feeling like he wasn’t going anywhere.
He told The Beatles’ official biographer Hunter Davies how he composed the song: ‘I was just sitting, trying to think of a song, and I thought of myself sitting there, doing nothing and going nowhere. Once I’d thought of that, it was easy. It all came out.
'No, I remember now, I’d actually stopped trying to think of something. Nothing would come. I was cheesed off and went for a lie down, having given up. Then I thought of myself as "Nowhere Man" – sitting in his nowhere land.’
10-12. Here There & Everywhere/Good Day Sunshine/Got To Get You Into My Life (1966)
The summer of 1966 was something of a golden period. Glorious single followed glorious single – ‘Sunny Afternoon’ by The Kinks, ‘God Only Knows’ by The Beach Boys, ‘Substitute’ by The Who, ‘Pretty Flamingo’ by Manfred Mann, ‘Paint It Black’ by The Rolling Stones and ‘Paperback Writer’ by The Beatles.
In England, Swinging London was the happening centre of everything – Carnaby Street was the fashion hub for the beautiful people, even England’s football team won the football World Cup at Wembley Stadium. And it was into this sea of positivity that The Beatles launched Revolver (1966), their best album to date, and strong candidate for their best album ever.
Yet somewhat bizarrely, The Beatles abandoned their usual rule of not releasing singles from albums and issued a double-A-sided single with ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Of course, the single hit number one, but in hindsight, it feels like a missed opportunity to not release one of the album’s glorious slices of sunshine pop perfection.
These other options included the uber-mellow ‘Here, There & Everywhere’ (which McCartney himself has cited as his own favourite of his songs), the punchy horn-driven soul of ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ (a love song to the pot that filled the air on those hot summer nights), or the joyful ‘Good Day Sunshine’ (itself a hymn to hanging out in the sunshine). It seems like they had almost too many great songs to keep up with themselves.
13. With A Little Help From My Friends (1967)
The Beatles never released a single with Ringo Starr on lead vocals, and, with all due respect to the drummer, it’s clear why – after all, in Lennon and McCartney, they had two of the finest singers in rock history.
But if they had wanted to let the oldest member of the group take the spotlight for once, they could have done worse than to lift this track from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Its optimistic ode to camaraderie and solidarity chimed perfectly with the rose-tinted vibe of the original Summer of Love.
14. Baby You’re A Rich Man
John Lennon wrote the verses, while Paul McCartney had the chorus, and they found that the two parts made a perfect fit. As Lennon explained shortly before his death, ‘One half was all mine [sings] “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people, now that you know who you are?” Then Paul comes in with [sings] “Baby you’re a rich man”, which was a lick he had around.’
What stitches the separate elements together is the fabulous groove created by Starr’s laid-back drums and McCartney’s staccato Rickenbacker bass, on top of which pianos and other keyboards were added, before an exclamatory chorus of voices that apparently included Mick Jagger (he just happened to be passing) and, according to some sources, an oboe part played by Brian Jones, also of the Rolling Stones.
Recorded in May 1967, this would have been the perfect anthem for the summer of love, had it not been for the equally perfect ‘All You Need Is Love’.
15. Hey Bulldog (1968)
In early 1968, just a few days before flying off to India to study Transcendental Meditation, The Beatles headed into the recording studio to make a promo film for their forthcoming ‘Lady Madonna’ single. But the ever-efficient Beatles decided that, rather than waste a day miming to a finished song, they would use the studio time to get a new John Lennon song down on tape instead.
The resulting ‘Hey Bulldog’ is arguably the most overlooked track in their entire catalogue. An absolute killer guitar/piano riff kicks things off, and then it’s high energy all the way. Quite what it all means – if anything – is the subject of much debate, but the pure joy of playing together oozes out of the grooves. John and Paul’s random woofing, barking and howling over the coda is a highlight (you can hear an isolated version of this online and it’s guaranteed to make you smile).
And yet the song remained in the vault for almost a year, until it was released as one of only four new tracks on the soundtrack to their animated film Yellow Submarine (1969).
16. Back In The USSR (1968)
Written in Rishikesh, India, ‘Back In The USSR’ began life as an affectionate nod to The Beach Boys, one of the Beatles’ favourite groups, and whose frontman, Mike Love, was studying Transcendental Meditation with them under the tutorship of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As Love recalled, ‘I was sitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar and he was playing Back In The USSR", and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia.
'He was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me but I gave him the idea for that little section... I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on The Beach Boys.' It remains one of the band's most famous songs, and is the opener on their eponymous 1968 double album.
17. Helter Skelter (1968)
Paul McCartney has explained that he wrote ‘Helter Skelter’ after hearing a review of a new record by another band (sometimes cited as The Who, other times unknown) that claimed to be the wildest, heaviest song ever. Paul’s competitive nature made him decide that, when hearing the song in question and feeling underwhelmed, he would go one step further.
‘I thought “Ah, well, we’ll do one like that then.” And I had this song called ‘Helter Skelter,’ which is just [a] ridiculous song, so we did it like that cos I like noise.’
18. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (1968)
This George Harrison song on The Beatles (aka The White Album) was the first time the band used 8-track recording at the Abbey Road studios, after liberating the new piece of kit from an EMI suit’s office. And the most famous of the overdubs on those tracks was a guest appearance by Eric Clapton, one of George’s best friends.
His solo elevates the track but, as George explained, his presence in the studio made the rest of the band up their game, so as not to lose face in front of the esteemed guitar player. The result is a Beatles classic that was a firm fixture on the playlists of rock radio stations, as well as finishing high on most lists of greatest Beatles songs.
19. Here Comes The Sun (1969)
The seeds of this gorgeous George Harrison song were sown in the garden of Eric Clapton’s house in Ewhurst, Surrey. One day in April 1969, George bunked off from Beatles business matters at Apple, escaping to his friend’s house for some peace, and it was while strumming an acoustic guitar and strolling in Eric’s garden that the song began to come to him.
As he recalled in his autobiography, I Me Mine, ‘Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: “Sign this” and “sign that.” Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful.'
The finished song was a high point of their final masterpiece, Abbey Road (1969), released that summer. It was the last song George would ever bring to the Beatles – but what a way to bow out!
