FAQ

A tagging database of the complete Beatles catalogue – every song from 1962 through to the reunion singles, broken down across harmony, lyrics, studio technique, personnel, and form. Browsable, searchable, graphable. Full About.

Nahdi Lazar – a musician, developer, and lifelong Beatles obsessive. More in the author bio.

Three steps, in order: our own research and repeated listening, set against the published scholarship → analysis, worked out by hand with the aid of code and AI → a person reviewing every proposed tag before it lands. See the methodology section for the long version.

From the records themselves: close listening, and our own research into how each song was written and made. With a little help from the scholarship – Pollack, Lewisohn, the Complete Scores, MacDonald and others. Full bibliography in Sources & thanks.

Each tag is cross-referenced against multiple sources and verified by ear against the recording. That said: this is original analysis on a vast catalogue, and music theory is full of judgment calls. Errors happen. The “Something's wrong?” button on every song page goes straight to the maintainer.

Lennon–McCartney is the contractual credit shared between John and Paul, regardless of who actually wrote each song. On this site we attribute each song to its actual primary writer(s) based on historical evidence, while noting the official credit. Joint compositions are tagged as such. Who wrote what is a long and winding road – we do our best.

Verse

The main storytelling section. Same melody, different lyrics each time. In our structure notation, always letter A.

Chorus

A contrasting section that repeats, usually with the same lyrics and melody. Always letter B. Some people call this “the bridge” (especially in AABA form) – we don't.

Bridge

A section that provides contrast and typically appears once. A departure, not a destination. The wild metric shift in “Here Comes the Sun” (the “sun, sun, sun” bit in 11/8) is a textbook bridge.

Refrain

A repeated line at the end of a verse – not a separate section. The “I wanna hold your hand” hook in “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a refrain. Some people use it interchangeably with “chorus” – we don't.

Intro

The opening section. Instrumental, vocal, or both. Sometimes introduces the main riff or melody; sometimes stands on its own.

Outro

A standalone closing section – fade-out, vamp, reprise, or something new. The instrumental passage closing “Let It Be” and the fading guitar of “Come Together” are outros.

Coda

An ending that grows out of a previous section rather than standing on its own – a tail, not a separate room. A song can have an outro, a coda, both, or neither. The ending of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” grows from the last refrain – that's a coda.

Riff

A short, repeating – usually instrumental – phrase that defines a song's identity. The opening guitar line of “Day Tripper” is a riff.

Middle eight

A British term for the bridge. On this site they're treated as the same thing.

Each distinct section gets a letter – usually A = verse, B = chorus, C = bridge – and the sequence shows the song's shape at a glance. Framing sections (intros, outros, pre-choruses, interludes) are omitted from the letter sequence; you can search for them individually using tags like “Has pre-chorus” or “Has intro”. Sections with slight variations stay the same letter; the tag's note records the variant details.

AABA = two verses, a contrasting B section (chorus or bridge), then verse returns. We use it broadly to cover the AABA family (AABABA, AABAA, etc.) – not strictly the 32-bar form. Most pre-1965 Beatles songs follow this pattern or a variation of it.

Through-composed = no repeating verse-chorus structure; each section is distinct, joined into a continuous whole. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” is the textbook example – three or four different songs stitched into one.

Yes – every song page has a “Something's wrong?” button that opens a feedback form. For broader suggestions (new tag types, new graphs, etc.) the contact form is the right place.

Not yet. Everything visible on the site is fair game to browse and reuse under CC BY-SA 4.0. A formal API or dataset dump may land later; if you have a specific use case, drop a line via the contact form.

Yes – content is released under CC BY-SA 4.0 (reuse with attribution, share alike). Standard citation formats below – replace the title and URL with whatever page you're citing:

APA

Lazar, N. (2026). Eleanor Rigby. Beatlesongs.wiki. https://beatlesongs.wiki/songs/eleanor-rigby

MLA

Lazar, Nahdi. “Eleanor Rigby.” Beatlesongs.wiki, 2026, beatlesongs.wiki/songs/eleanor-rigby.

Plain text

“Eleanor Rigby” on Beatlesongs.wiki (2026): https://beatlesongs.wiki/songs/eleanor-rigby

BibTeX

@misc{beatlesongswiki_eleanor_rigby, title = {Eleanor Rigby}, author = {Lazar, Nahdi}, year = {2026}, url = {https://beatlesongs.wiki/songs/eleanor-rigby}, note = {Beatlesongs.wiki} }

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