Beatles Trivia: What Was the Fab Four’s 1st No. 1 Hit?

The Beatles had a massive number of hits. However, groups often truly make it once they have their first No. 1 single. The Beatles made it to the top in the United Kingdom for the first time in 1962. They did so in the United States for the first time in 1964 with a completely different song.

1 of The Beatles’ forgotten hits was their 1st chart-topper in the United Kingdom

The Official Charts Company reports that The Beatles’ first two charting songs in the United Kingdom were “Love Me Do,” which hit No. 17, and “Please Please Me,” which hit No. 2. Their first chart-topper was “From Me to You.”

This fact might come as a surprise. Even compared to the Fab Four’s other bubblegum songs, “From Me to You” gets very little attention today. It’s still a fun song. Regardless, if you want to hear an early Beatles song with a harmonica, “Love Me Do” is the far better option.

The band broke through in the United States with a far more famous No. 1 hit

It took a Beatles song with a little more rock ‘n’ roll to bring The Beatles to the pinnacle of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time. In the U.S., the group’s original chart-topper was “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Today, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is much more iconic than “From Me to You.” That could be because it’s the better and more interesting song. Or that could be because the U.S. has had a much more significant role in shaping pop culture in the last 60 years than the U.K. has. That’s not a knock on the tastes or output of people from the U.K. It’s merely an acknowledgment that it has a smaller population and much less media hegemony than Uncle Sam and his people.

John Lennon on The Beatles’ ‘From Me to You’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’

During a 1980 interview in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed the origins of both songs. He said the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership initially wrote “From Me to You” in a different style. “We were writing it in a car, I think, and I think the first line was mine,” he said. “I mean, I know it was mine. And then after that we took it from there. It was far bluesier than that when we wrote it. The notes — today you could rearrange it pretty funky.”

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” was more collaborative. “We wrote a lot of stuff together, one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball,” he recalled. “Like in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar, playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, ‘Oh you-u-u … got that something.’ And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that — both playing into each other’s nose.”

“From Me to You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” might seem like simple songs at first, but they both have helped change the entire history of music.