A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night is a 1964 soundtrack album by The Beatles.
Every song on it belongs to the band. Parlophone put out the Beatles' third studio album on 10 July 1964 with no covers and no outside writers on the sleeve, the first time that had been true of one of their records. Lennon and McCartney wrote the whole thing, including the numbers the film needed.
Side one is the soundtrack half, the songs written for the picture that shares the album's title. The rest sits outside the film, so the record carries two temperaments under one cover: the rush of 1964 rock and roll on one side, and a pop rock band on the other, finding out what else it could build now that the material was its own. The writing is quick, the songs are short, and the deadline is audible in the best way.
American buyers got something else under the same name. United Artists released its own version two weeks earlier, on 26 June, reshuffling the running order and filling the gaps with instrumental cues from George Martin's film score. Two countries, two track listings, one title, which makes this a useful place to see how differently Britain and America treated a pop album at the time.
For anyone working through the Beatles in order, this is the point where the borrowing stops.
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A few thoughts on A Hard Day’s Night
The film is the obvious companion. A Hard Day's Night is where side one's songs were meant to land, and hearing the record first, then watching the band play the same material, fills in the half the vinyl leaves out. The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years covers the touring stretch this album sat inside, which goes some way to explaining the pace of the writing. Readers who want the songs taken apart one at a time have A hard day's write and Tell Me Why, both built for exactly this kind of listening. The Beatles: Get Back shows the same four people composing in a room years later, at length and on camera. And That Thing You Do! is the fond fiction version: a 1964 band, one hit single, the machinery closing in.