"Things We Said Today" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by the Beatles | ||||
from the album A Hard Day's Night | ||||
A-side | "A Hard Day's Night" | |||
Released | 10 July 1964 | |||
Recorded | 2 June 1964 EMI Studios, London |
|||
Genre | Rock | |||
Length | 2:38 | |||
Label | Parlophone | |||
Writer(s) | Lennon–McCartney | |||
Producer(s) | George Martin | |||
the Beatles singles chronology | ||||
|
||||
|
"Things We Said Today" is a song by English rock band the Beatles written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was composed for the film A Hard Day's Night but was eventually not included. It does appear on the soundtrack album. It was also released as the B-side of the single "A Hard Day's Night" in the UK.
McCartney wrote the song in May 1964 while cruising the Caribbean aboard a yacht called Happy Days with his then-girlfriend Jane Asher. Music critic Ian MacDonald said, "The sombre lyric—provoked by the frustrating interruptions of a relationship between two career people—matches the lowering gloom of the music."
The song is one of three main compositions (along with "And I Love Her" and "Can't Buy Me Love") that Paul McCartney wrote for the film. Recorded in advance of film production for lip-synching reasons, "Things We Said Today" has a reverse nostalgia premise. McCartney said, "I wrote this on acoustic. It was a slightly nostalgic thing already, a future nostalgia. We’ll remember the things we said today, sometime in the future, so the song projects itself into the future."
McCartney was particularly satisfied with his chord change, F major to B flat major—instead of the more obvious F minor—which first occurs beneath "…wishing you weren't so far away" in the song.John Lennon accentuates the strident acoustic guitar strumming by triple hitting a low A note on a piano. The dynamic of the song moves from melancholy to rock and back with a minor to major key change during its middle eight section.