Curated playlist
UK singles chart 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…
- Roar (song)"Roar" arrived on the 10th of August 2013, two days before Katy Perry's label had planned, after a digital leak forced Capitol Records to release it early. That accidental early debut did nothing to slow the song down. Within its first…
- 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…
- Bohemian Rhapsody"Bohemian Rhapsody" arrived in 1975 as something British radio executives were fairly certain would never be played. Six minutes long, with no chorus, three distinct musical personalities crammed into a single track, and lyrics that swung…
- She's Leaving Home"She's Leaving Home" begins with a door closing quietly in the early morning. A teenager slips out of the house, leaving a note behind. Her parents wake, read her words, and break down. That is the entire story, told in under four minutes…
- 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…
- Eleanor RigbyEleanor Rigby is a 1966 song by the Beatles, and it arrived on the charts with none of the guitars, drums, or amplified roar the band had built its name on. In its place: eight strings, a minor key, and two characters nobody in a pop song…
- 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…
- Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is a song the Beatles nearly tore themselves apart making. Paul McCartney wrote it in Rishikesh, India, in early 1968, while he and his bandmates were studying Transcendental Meditation. Prudence Farrow, a fellow…
- 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…
- Space Oddity"Space Oddity" reached British airwaves on the 11th of July, 1969, exactly five days before Apollo 11 lifted off for the Moon. The BBC broadcast it as background music during live coverage of the lunar landing. Nobody at the corporation…
- 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…
- From Me to YouJohn Lennon and Paul McCartney began writing From Me to You while on a coach heading to Shrewsbury as part of the Beatles' tour with Helen Shapiro. The title was inspired by the name of the letters section of the New Musical Express, which…
- 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…
- Mull of Kintyre (song)"Mull of Kintyre" was recorded outdoors on the 9th of August 1977, with Paul McCartney's vocals and acoustic guitar captured in the open air at High Park Farm in Scotland. The tapes nearly didn't survive. Insects threatened the recording,…
- Now and Then (Beatles song)"Now and Then" arrived on the 2nd of November 2023 carrying a weight no pop single ever had before: it was billed as the last Beatles song. Fifty-three years after the band broke apart, three of its surviving members and one ghost took…