She Loves You at First Unnoticed In America
The Beatles were a very versatile group yet it was not just heir versatility that everyone loved it was the way they played their music for their audiences. This was shown when they recoded one of their biggest hits into German. The story behind this is unknown to many Beatles fans.
First of all, when the song “She Loves You” first came out it in 1963 it was an instant hit in the United Kingdom. It was the best selling single of its time in the UK and set several new music records. It stayed on British charts for thirty-one weeks straight. Eighteen of these weeks it was in the top three. It is still the best selling Beatles single in Britain and set records as the best selling single for a fourteen-year period. But when it premiered on the radio stations in the United States it went almost completely unnoticed. The song was thought to have sparked its own controversy as the “yeah, yeah, yeah” was said to be nothing more than British lower class slang. Even McCartney’s father objected to it and tried to persuade him to change it. The song went nowhere at first. It was not until the success of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” that “She Loves You” actually got discovered by the American youth. At that point, it got on the American charts and stayed there for fifteen weeks. In no time the group went from a bunch of nobodies to being at the center of Beatlemania.
“She Loves You” was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in a hotel room one afternoon. The boys were lounging with their guitars after playing a concert in Newcastle. They did something different by writing the song in the third person, telling the story of a guy whose thinks his girlfriend does not care about him anymore and his friend telling him she does. This composition was written in a matter of a few hours.
But there is much more to this story. Shortly after the initial success of the song the Beatles recorded it in German. Did you ever wonder why? The real reason is said to be the concern of their manager that the only way to gain acceptance of their music in Germany was to record it in German. The boys were against this at first as they thought it a stupid idea to record their music in another language. They did not want to get into a habit of doing that. As a matter of fact, they did not show up for their recording session for that reason. Their producer urged them to do it and they gave in. The song, now titled “Sie Liebt Dich”, not only was a huge success in Germany, but Americans loved it too and the single was so popular it made the charts there as well.
The song “She Loves You” was so much an acceptance of the Beatles that it was named the third biggest song that changed the world by Uncut Magazine in 2005. Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” came before it. This list was looking at music that made statements and changed musical attitudes. Though there was some disagreement over the choice of Dylan’s song as the number one the list stood.
They did record one other song in German. The other one was “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, which became “Koom, Gib Mir Deine Hand”. She “Love You” was also the first time the writing of the two Beatles was credited as Lennon/McCartney. Few realize that at first it was the other way.
