The Beatles song "And I Love Her" has long been one of my very favorite tunes by the Fab Four. What follows is a closer look at this song for those who love the song as much as me.
"And I Love Her" was included on The Beatles album A Hard Days Night. This album is, of course, the soundtrack to the film by the same name. A majority of Beatles fans think the album was a great breakthrough and the greatest of the band's first 4 albums. It is also the only album to contain only songs by John Lennon & Paul McCartney (this is mostly because later albums contain tunes by George Harrison too.)
It is true that in some ways "And I Love Her" is a very repetitive simple song and one could make a strong argument that its lyrics are pretty cliche. But the melody is remarkable enough and there are enough little musical touches that the song is still a great one in-spite of these things which could be considered weaknesses.
One thing that I think is cool about this recording is how it actually goes into 4 different keys throughout the song This is because it flips back and forth between a major key and its relative minor through most of the song and then during Harrison's tasteful guitar solo the key goes up a semitone and finishes there when Paul McCartney's vocals come back in.
On the Anthology 1 CDs we hear an earlier version of the song that employs a full band sound and doesn't have the nice guitar riff that marks the final version. The difference between this version and the official final version shows how a better arrangement can really make a song work.
As a surprising final touch "And I Love Her" ends on the major version of the relative minor tonic chord. In other words instead of the telegraphed D minor at the end it ends on a D major instead. Lennon & McCartney often added these little touches to their songs and that helped to set them apart from most other popular music.
"And I Love Her" was included on The Beatles album A Hard Days Night. This album is, of course, the soundtrack to the film by the same name. A majority of Beatles fans think the album was a great breakthrough and the greatest of the band's first 4 albums. It is also the only album to contain only songs by John Lennon & Paul McCartney (this is mostly because later albums contain tunes by George Harrison too.)
It is true that in some ways "And I Love Her" is a very repetitive simple song and one could make a strong argument that its lyrics are pretty cliche. But the melody is remarkable enough and there are enough little musical touches that the song is still a great one in-spite of these things which could be considered weaknesses.
One thing that I think is cool about this recording is how it actually goes into 4 different keys throughout the song This is because it flips back and forth between a major key and its relative minor through most of the song and then during Harrison's tasteful guitar solo the key goes up a semitone and finishes there when Paul McCartney's vocals come back in.
On the Anthology 1 CDs we hear an earlier version of the song that employs a full band sound and doesn't have the nice guitar riff that marks the final version. The difference between this version and the official final version shows how a better arrangement can really make a song work.
As a surprising final touch "And I Love Her" ends on the major version of the relative minor tonic chord. In other words instead of the telegraphed D minor at the end it ends on a D major instead. Lennon & McCartney often added these little touches to their songs and that helped to set them apart from most other popular music.
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Buy The Beatles in Stereo and The Beatles in Mono box sets to hear this song in remastered stereo & mono.
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