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TL;DR:

  • Ringo Starr played a girl group song with a band that was a contemporary of The Beatles.
  • The Beatles put their own spin on the song.
  • That cover appeared on the group’s album, Please Please Me, which was a hit in the United Kingdom.

Many of The Beatles‘ songs were covers. Ringo Starr enjoys playing one of those covers more than any of The Beatles’ original songs. During an interview, Paul McCartney said the Fab Four never thought about the implications of the tune’s lyrics that much.

Ringo Starr loved singing a Beatles song that was originally by The Shirelles

During a 2023 interview with Vulture, Ringo was asked which song he enjoyed performing live the most. “‘Boys,'” he said. “I’ve been doing it forever and it’s a girl’s song. A wonderful girl group called The Shirelles did the original.” The Shirelles were an American group most known for the Carole King-penned hit “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.”

“I was performing it with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes before The Beatles, and it just rocks,” he said. “It makes me smile that I’m still doing this song after all these years.” For context, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were contemporaries of The Beatles who never became major stars. Despite this, they worked with Brian Epstein on a cover of “America” from the musical West Side Story.

Paul McCartney said the band didn’t consider the implication of singing a song about boys

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul recalled what it was like for The Beatles to perform at The Cavern Club. “We did The Shirelles’ ‘Soldier Boy,’ which is a girl’s song,” he recalled. “It never occurred to us. No wonder all the gays liked John.

“And Ringo used to sing ‘Boys,’ another Shirelles number,” he added. “It was so innocent. We just never even thought, ‘Why is he singing about boys?’ We loved the song. We loved the records so much that what it said was irrelevant; it was just the spirit, the sound, the feeling. The joy when you did that ‘Bab shoo-wap, bab shoo wop.’ That was the great fun of doing ‘Boys.'” The band also covered tunes by Little Richard and Ray Charles during their early years.

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How The Beatles’ ‘Boys’ performed in the United States and the United Kingdom

The Beatles’ cover of “Boys” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The cover appeared on The Beatles’ debut album, Please Please Me. That record was a very minor hit in the United States, reaching No. 155 on the Billboard 200 for a single week.

According to The Official Charts Company, “Boys” never charted in the United Kingdom either. On the other hand, Please Please Me was a huge hit in the U.K. There, it reached No. 1 and spent 70 weeks on the chart. Later, the album recharted at No. 32 and stayed on the chart for six weeks.

The Shirelles made “Boys” famous and The Beatles’ cover brought Ringo a lot of joy over the years.

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