Everything you need to know about The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night." |
"A Hard Day's Night" was the first Beatles track to earn the respect of serious listeners, breaking away from their Moptop image to showcase John's passionate soul. Even though it wasn't obvious at the time, it marked a turning point in the Beatles' artistic evolution. The song combines various influences: a cowboy gallop spurred by a Wilson Pickett cowbell, underscored by Buddy Holly’s tomtoms, and a distinctive middle section, creating a sound that felt entirely original. The entire composition is written in the mixolydian mode, an ancient vocal scale abandoned back at the dawn of the modern tonality in the 17th century but preserved in British, Irish, and American folk song. Though cast in the familiar form of a love song, its real theme is work-the hard, earnest, exhausting labor that men must perform to survive.
This shift from romantic themes to more profound topics became a hallmark of John’s songwriting, even though it went completely against the grain of the Beatles' success. Once the boys went commercial, they adopted the policy of writing nothing but love songs aimed at the teenybopper market. The first one hundred songs by Lennon/McCartney deal exclusively with the theme of boy-girl love. While Paul seemed OK with this, it started to bother John by this point.
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18 сен 2024
