"And I Love Her"

"And I Love Her" is a song recorded by The Beatles and is the fifth track on their third album, A Hard Day's Night. It was released 20 July 1964 with "If I Fell" as a single by Capitol Records in the United States, reaching #12 in Billboard (see 1964 in music).

The Beatles performed "And I Love Her" just once outside of Abbey Road Studios. On 14 July 1964 they played it for an edition of the BBC's Top Gear radio show, which was broadcast two days later.

Composition

This song was one of the first ballads with a title that starts in mid-sentence. Paul McCartney was pleased with himself that he came up with this clever idea.

A majority of this song switches back and forth between the key of E and its relative minor C#m. It also changes keys altogether just before the solo, to F. It ends, on the parallel major of the key of F's relative minor, D. This technique is known as tierce picarde and had been used in the past by some composers, including Bach.

The song was written mainly by McCartney, though John Lennon claimed in an interview with Playboy that his major contribution was the "middle eight" section ("A love like ours/Could never die/As long as I/Have you near me").

Beatles publisher Dick James lends support to this claim, saying that the middle eight was added during recording at the suggestion of producer George Martin. According to James, Lennon called for a break and "within half an hour [Lennon and McCartney] wrote...a very constructive middle to a very commercial song."

There are also many who believe that it would seem only logical to think that Lennon did, in fact, write the middle eight, considering the lyrics of that section do not "fit in with the rest of the song".

McCartney, on the other hand, maintains that "the middle eight is mine.... I wrote this on my own."



Releases

Different edits of this song have been released throughout the world; these differ in the number of times the closing guitar riff is repeated, and in McCartney's lead vocal being single or double-tracked in the main verses of the song. The version on the movie A Hard Day's Night is half a step lower than the album version.

Personnel

* Paul McCartney – lead vocal, bass guitar
* John Lennon – acoustic rhythm guitar
* George Harrison – acoustic lead guitar
* Ringo Starr – bongos, claves
* George Martin – producer

Covers

* As with many Beatles songs, this has been covered by many artists of varying style from RnB, Crooner, Pop and even Grunge. It was translated into a power ballad - of sorts - by Australia's John Farnham, on his Anthology #2: The Classic Hits album.

* On the American soundtrack album release of A Hard Day's Night, George Martin and his orchestra covered the song in a slower-tempo, easy listening-styled instrumental version lasting over a minute longer than The Beatles' vocal version on the same album.

* Roberto Carlos made a cover, (Eu) Te Amo, in Portuguese and later in Spanish.

* Jack Jones covered the song in 1965 for his album, "There's Love and There's Love and There's Love", arranged by Nelson Riddle.

* Esther Phillips reversed the gender of the song in 1965; her "And I Love Him" reached #54 that year on the Billboard charts.

* In 1965, Bob Marley & The Wailers covered the song on their album "The Wailing Wailers at Studio One".

* In 1970, Rita Lee covered the song on her album "Build Up".

* In 1972, Bobby Womack covered the song for his hit album "Understanding".

* In 1981, Sarah Vaughan covered the song for her album The Songs of the Beatles.

* In 1995, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles covered the song on "Motown Meets the Beatles".

* In 1995, Diana Krall covered the song on the compilation album "(I Got No Kick Against) Modern Jazz", subtitled "A GRP Artists' Celebration of the Songs of the Beatles".

* In 2006, Barry Manilow covered the song for his The Greatest Songs of the Sixties.

* in 2001, Cliff Richard covered the song on his album Wanted.

* In 2008, included in Kenny Lattimore's Timeless album.

* In 2009, Ryan Parks of Organic Keys covered the song for his recording project album.

* Also covered by The Wailers at Studio One in 1965.

* "And I Love Her" was slated to appear briefly in Across the Universe, with only its second refrain partially sung by Martin Luther McCoy, but it was removed during editing. It appears as a deleted scene on the DVD. It did, however, appear for a small section in the orchestral scoring of the movie.

* Richard Marx and Vince Gill covered the song as a duet for Marx's latest album titled Sundown.

Album: A Hard Day's Night
Released: July 20, 1964
Recorded: Abbey Road Studios, February 25–27, 1964
Genre: Pop
Length: 2:31
Label: Parlophone (UK)
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Producer: George Martin

B-side: "If I Fell"
Released: July 20, 1964 (US)
Format: 7"
Label: Capitol 5235 (USA)

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