Anne Murray’s Cover of a Song From The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ Was Bigger Than the Original

Anne Murray put her spin on several of The Beatles‘ songs. Murray’s cover of a song from The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night outshone the original. Despite this, her version of the Fab Four’s track is terrible and doesn’t fit the song’s lyrics.

1 song from The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and Anne Murray’s cover didn’t hit the top 40

The Beatles’ “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” was barely a hit. It reached No. 95 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a single week. The tune appeared on the album A Hard Day’s Night. That record topped the Billboard 200 for 14 weeks, lasting on the chart for 56 weeks.

Murray’s cover of “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” was a bigger hit. Her version of the tune peaked at No. 64 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for six weeks. Murray included “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” on her album Somebody’s Waiting. The album reached No. 88 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for 15 weeks.

Anne Murray’s version of The Beatles’ song is awful in a bizarre way

It’s fitting that the public reacted to the two recordings of “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” so differently. After all, the two renditions could not be more distinct. The Beatles’ track is a rock ‘n’ roll number with some surf rock elements. It’s the sort of upbeat tune that would get mop tops dancing.

Murray’s cover, on the other hand, is a horrid easy listening song. It sounds less like a dance song and more like a Barbra Streisand ballad. To try to give this interpretation of the song some energy, it transitions into a waltz at a few points. Murray’s “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” is strange, awful, and a perfect encapsulation of why her music is mostly forgotten. 

Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote the original song for ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney discussed writing “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” with John Lennon for A Hard Day’s Night. “We wrote ‘I’m Happy Just to Dance with You’ for George in the film,” he remembered. “It was a bit of a formula song. We knew that in if you went to an A-flat minor, you could always make a song with those chords; that change pretty much always excited you. This is one of these. Certainly, ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret’ was. 

“This one anyway was a straight co-written song for George,” Paul recalled. “We wouldn’t have actually wanted to sing it because it was a bit … The ones that pandered to the fans in truth were our least favorite songs but they were good. They were good for the time. The nice thing about it was to actually pull a song off on a slim little premise like that. A simple little idea. It was songwriting practice.”

The Beatles’ “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” was formulaic and Murray’s interpretation was unexpected in the worst way.