1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 44. The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

Although this is still very much the “Early Beatles” sound, all jangly rhythms and harmonic choruses, this is much more poppy and less R&B compared to With The Beatles. Probably because this is entirely original material (mostly Lennon or McCartney, with one Harrison).  

The compositions are mainly catchy tunes with a familiar chorus and hook, pretty much quintessential pop styling, with the title track and Can’t Buy Me Love as the most famous tracks. There’s a contrast with the McCartney-penned And I Love Her, a slower more romantic piece, but the other tracks which don’t get the same airplay as most Beatles stuff are all pretty much of an ilk to these tracks on way or another. Harrison plays a 12-string Rickenbacker on many tracks, giving the album that classic jangly sound much emulated. 

With the last entry in this series, Dusty Springfield, I lamented that the three British acts so far were still covering American songs, and now that The Beatles are singing their own pieces it seems to me, although I may be imagining it, that John especially is allowing his natural accent to show through rather than affecting a mid-Atlantic sound. Which is good, and it’s kind of weird that we’ve had Cuban and African musicians on this list already that were able to sing in their own language, while (Liverpudlian) English has had to be American English until now. 

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