The Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’ Was Inspired by a Song That Wasn’t as Popular
The Beatles‘ “She Loves You” remains one of the Fab Four’s most famous songs and one of the most famous songs of the whole decade. Notably, “She Loves You” was inspired by another hit that came out around the same time. The earlier track wasn’t as successful.
Bobby Rydell inspired The Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’ although he was unaware of them
In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed the origin of “She Loves You.” “We must have had a few hours before the show so we said, ‘Oh, great! Let’s have a ciggy and write a song!” he recalled.
“I remember for some reason thinking of Bobby Rydell; he must have had a hit that we were interested in,” Paul said. “I remember thinking of him and sitting on the bed in this hotel somewhere with John in the afternoon daylight.” For context, Rydell’s “Forget Him” was a hit at the time.
Notably, this was not the only time Rydell crossed paths with the Fab Four. During a 2017 interview with Fox News, Rydell said he was on a bus once with British singer Helen Shapiro. She told Rydell The Beatles were in the car in front of them.
Rydell hadn’t heard of the band because they weren’t famous in the United States yet, so he thought Shapiro was talking about bugs. He started looking around the bus for insects.
Subsequently, Rydell saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Then, he remembered the incident on the bus. The “Forget Him” singer wished he took a picture of the Fab Four when he had the chance.
Paul McCartney contrasted the song with some of The Beatles’ earlier tunes
In Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul compared and contrasted “She Loves You” with some of The Beatles’ other early songs. “It was again a she, you, me, I, personal preposition song,” he recalled. “I suppose the most interesting thing about it was that it was a message song, it was someone bringing a message.
“It wasn’t us anymore, it was moving off the ‘I love you, girl’ or ‘love me do,’ it was a third person, which was a shift away,” he added. “‘I saw her, and she said to me, to tell you, that she loves you’ so there’s a little distance we managed to put in it which was quite interesting.”
How ‘Forget Him’ and ‘She Loves You’ performed on the charts
Rydell’s “Forget Him” became one of his biggest hits in the United States. It reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 16 weeks. It appeared on his album Forget Him, which was far less popular. The album made it to No. 98 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for four weeks.
On the other hand, “She Loves You” became a No. 1 single. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks, staying on the chart for 15 weeks altogether. The tune appeared on multiple compilation albums, including 1. That album was No. 1 for eight of its staggering 532 weeks on the Billboard 200.
“Forget Him” might be forgotten but The Beatles gave it a place in rock ‘n’ roll history.
