Can't Buy Me Love
| "Can't Buy Me Love" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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US picture sleeve
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| Single by the Beatles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| from the album A Hard Day's Night | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| B-side | "You Can't Do That" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Released | 16 March 1964 (US) 20 March 1964 (UK) |
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| Format | 7" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recorded | 29 January 1964, Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris; 25 February and 10 March 1964, EMI Studios, London |
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| Genre | Pop rock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Length | 2:11 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Writer(s) | Lennon–McCartney | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Producer(s) | George Martin | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Beatles UK singles chronology | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Can't Buy Me Love" is a song composed by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon–McCartney) and released by the Beatles on the A-side of their sixth British single, "Can't Buy Me Love/You Can't Do That". In September 2015, the Beatles donated the use of their recording of the song to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for a television commercial.
When pressed by American journalists in 1966 to reveal the song's "true" meaning, McCartney stated that "I think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggests that 'Can't Buy Me Love' is about a prostitute, I draw the line." He went on to say: "The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well, but they won't buy me what I really want." However, he was to comment later: "It should have been 'Can Buy Me Love' " when reflecting on the perks that money and fame had brought him.
While in Paris, the Beatles stayed at the five star George V hotel and had an upright piano moved into one of their suites so that song writing could continue. It was here that McCartney wrote "Can't Buy Me Love." The song was written under the pressure of the success achieved by "I Want to Hold Your Hand" which had just reached number one in America. When producer George Martin first heard "Can't Buy Me Love" he felt the song needed changing: "I thought that we really needed a tag for the song’s ending, and a tag for the beginning; a kind of intro. So I took the first two lines of the chorus and changed the ending, and said 'Let's just have these lines, and by altering the second phrase we can get back into the verse pretty quickly.'" And they said, "That's not a bad idea, we’ll do it that way".
The song's verse is a twelve bar blues in structure, a formula that the Beatles seldom applied to their own material.
"Can't Buy Me Love" was recorded on 29 January 1964 at EMI's Pathe Marconi Studios in Paris, France, where the Beatles were performing 18 days of concerts at the Olympia Theatre. At this time, EMI's West Germany branch, Odeon, insisted that the Beatles would not sell records in any significant numbers in Germany unless they were actually sung in the German language and the Beatles reluctantly agreed to re-record the vocals to "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" prior to them being released in Germany. George Martin travelled to Paris with a newly mastered rhythm track for what was to be "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" ("Come, Give Me your Hand"/"I Want to Hold your Hand"). "Sie Liebt Dich" ("She Loves You") required the Beatles to record a new rhythm track as the original two-track recording had been scrapped. EMI sent a translator to be present for this recording session which had been hurriedly arranged to tie in with the Beatles' Paris commitments. This was accomplished well within the allotted studio time allowing the Beatles an opportunity to record the backing track, with a guide vocal, to the recently composed "Can't Buy Me Love". At this stage the song included background vocal harmonies. But after listening to the first take, the band concluded that the song did not need them. Therefore, "Can't Buy Me Love" became the first single the Beatles released without their characteristic background harmonies. McCartney's final vocal was overdubbed at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London, on 25 February. Also re-recorded on this day at EMI Studios was George Harrison's modified guitar solo, although his original solo can still just be heard in the background. Harrison said: "What happened was, we recorded first in Paris and re-recorded in England. Obviously they'd tried to overdub it, but in those days they only had two tracks, so you can hear the version we put on in London, and in the background you can hear a quieter one."Helen Shapiro, a friend of the Beatles and present at this overdub session, says that Ringo Starr also added extra cymbals "over the top" and that "apparently this was something he did quite often on their records" (Geoff Emerick, tape operator and later the Beatles' recording engineer, credits Norman Smith, the Beatles' then-current engineer, with this overdub). "Can't Buy Me Love" is also the only English-language Beatles track that the Beatles themselves recorded in a studio outside the UK, although the instrumentation of the Beatles' B-side "The Inner Light" was recorded in India by Indian session musicians.
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Wikipedia