Curated playlist
Cashbox number-one singles
- She Loves You"She Loves You" arrived in British record shops on the 23rd of August 1963, and by the time the year ended it had sold more copies in the United Kingdom than any other single released that year. It would go on to hold the title of…
- Help! (song)"Help!" is a song that John Lennon would later call one of the most honest things he ever wrote. It arrived in the summer of 1965 dressed as a pop single, racing along at a tempo that Lennon himself came to regret. Beneath the exclamation…
- Let It Be (song)"Let It Be" entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 6 in the spring of 1970. At the time, no song had ever debuted that high on the chart. Within weeks, it climbed to number one and held that spot for two weeks in April. Yet the timing…
- Ticket to Ride (song)"Ticket to Ride" arrived in April 1965 and sounded like nothing the Beatles had released before. Recorded at EMI Studios in London on the 15th of February that year, the track carried a weight and a drone that sat uneasily alongside the…
- All You Need Is Love"All You Need Is Love" reached over 400 million people in 25 countries on the 25th of June 1967, making it one of the most witnessed moments in television history up to that point. A live satellite broadcast called Our World, the first of…
- Paperback Writer"Paperback Writer" arrived in May 1966 as the A-side of the Beatles' eleventh single, and it came loaded with an unusual distinction: it was the first Beatles single since "Love Me Do" in 1962 to generate something less than universal…
- The Long and Winding Road"The Long and Winding Road" arrived as the Beatles were already falling apart. Paul McCartney wrote it at High Park Farm, his property near Campbeltown, Scotland, sometime in 1968, sitting alone at a piano while the band he had helped…
- Get Back"Get Back" began not as a song but as an offhand riff played on a Höfner bass at Twickenham Studios on the 7th of January 1969. Paul McCartney was noodling, the cameras were rolling, and what came out of that unstructured jam would become…
- I Want to Hold Your Hand"I Want to Hold Your Hand" was recorded by the Beatles on the 17th of October 1963, and within weeks it had upended the American music industry in ways no British act had managed before. Advance orders in the United Kingdom alone exceeded…
- Hey Jude"Hey Jude" began as a car journey and a father's absence. In June 1968, Paul McCartney drove out to Weybridge to visit a five-year-old boy named Julian Lennon, whose parents had just separated. By the time McCartney arrived at Kenwood, the…
- I Will Survive"I Will Survive" arrived in October 1978 as a B-side nobody expected to matter. Gloria Gaynor recorded her vocals wearing a back brace, recovering from a fall at a concert. The session musicians had thirty-five minutes, no knowledge of the…
- Love Me Do"Love Me Do" by the Beatles arrived in British record shops on the 5th of October 1962, a date that marks one of the more consequential releases in the history of popular music. Built on just three chords and a wailing harmonica, it…
- Penny LanePenny Lane is a road in a south Liverpool suburb, and it is also one of the most celebrated songs the Beatles ever made. Released in February 1967 as a double A-side single alongside "Strawberry Fields Forever", it arrived at a moment when…
- Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" began not with a guitar or a studio, but with a drawing made by a three-year-old boy. Julian Lennon came home from nursery school one day and showed his father a picture he called "Lucy - in the sky with…