Beatles – "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (1963)

I'll tell you somethin'

I think you'll understand

When I say that somethin'

I want to hold your hand

Today’s featured record was the Beatles’ first American hit, which quickly climbed to the #1 spot after entering the Billboard “Hot 100” in January 1964.

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“I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a classic Lennon-McCartney “songlet.”  

John and Paul had zillions of ideas for songs, but they rarely developed those ideas fully – hence my describing them as “songlets.”  

Maybe they just didn’t have the ability to turn a songlet into a fully realized song.  Or maybe they couldn’t find the time to do that because they were just too busy cranking out records and touring and appearing on TV shows and making movies.

Whatever the reason, the Beatles regularly fell back on shameless repetition to stretch their songlets to acceptable lengths.

A lot of pop records from this era have repeated verses and bridges, but the Beatles went a little overboard with the repetition.

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If you break down “I Want to Hold Your Hand” into its component parts, this is what you get:

– Intro

– First verse/refrain (“Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something”)

– Second verse/refrain (“Oh please, say to me”)

– Bridge (“And when I touch you”)

– First verse/refrain

– Bridge

– First verse/refrain

– Outro

Once you get to the end of the first playing of the bridge, you’re basically at the halfway point of this song, which is 2:26 long.  The second half of the record is just repetition to no real end.

I’m not going to bust the Beatles’ b*lls for repeating the first verse/refrain of the song once – but repeating it twice just isn’t acceptable.

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Here’s what the song would look like with the excess repetition removed:

– Intro

– First verse/refrain (“Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something”)

– Second verse/refrain (“Oh please, say to me”)

– Bridge (“And when I touch you”)

– First verse/refrain

– Outro

That cuts “I Want to Hold Your Hold” down to about 1:45.  (That’s short, but not really too short.)

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What’s the difference between a refrain and a chorus?  I’m glad you asked.

Both of them come just after a song’s verses.  While there are usually at least two or three different verses in a song, the words and music of refrains and choruses usually don’t vary – they are pretty much the same every time.

The difference between the two is that a refrain is usually just a line or two tagged on to the end of the verse, while a chorus is usually longer and more developed – it’s quite distinct from the verse, and usually carries greater musical weight. 

Click here for a good basic discussion of the various component parts that songwriters assemble to create a popular song.

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Click here to listen to “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” whose lyrics are pretty close to gibberish.  (I loved the record when I was 12 years old, and I still do – but I don’t think anyone would claim that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” demonstrates impressive songwriting skills.)

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