The Beatles were in Abbey Road studios to record ‘She Loves You‘, which was to become the band’s fourth release on Parlophone Records. Following on from the success of previous releases ‘Love Me Do‘, ‘Please Please Me‘ and ‘From Me To You’, the song cemented The Beatles rise to the top of the music tree in the UK, but was largely ignored when first released in America.
The principal idea for the song is said to have been McCartney’s, who laid down plans for the song with John Lennon in a hotel room in Newcastle while the band were on tour. Talking about the writing process, Paul said: “there was a Bobby Rydell song out at the time ‘Forget Him’ and, as often happens, you think of one song when you write another…I’d planned an ‘answering song’ where a couple of us would sing ‘she loves you’ and the other ones would answer ‘yeah yeah’. We decided that was a crummy idea but at least we then had the idea of a song called ‘She Loves You’. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it — John and I, sitting on twin beds with guitars.”
The band entered Abbey Road studios on the 1st July riding a crest of a wave in the UK. After the breakthrough of ‘Please Please Me‘ and ‘From Me To You‘, the band had been touring almost non-stop, and had already completed three full nationwide tours in 1963 alone (a fourth would follow later in the year) to crowds screaming for The Beatles throughout performances by other acts, while also making numerous TV appearences – Britian was gripped with ‘Beatlesmania’.
The song went on to become one of The Beatles’ most enduring hits, going on to sell over a million copies in the UK and hitting no.1 on two seperate occasions. Despite failing to make an impact on it’s initial release in the US, the song took off after the release of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, and was one of the five Beatles to songs to hold the top 5 positions simultaneously on the US chart in April 1964, and was played on the Beatles’ first appearence on The Ed Sullivan Show.