A Hard Day's Night

This song touches on work ('I've been working like a dog'), and on the motifs of happiness and found inspiration, which the band first reached for on 'Twist and Shout' a year earlier. It uses simile, and a triple rhyme arrives once, "day/say/okay". The title is one of Ringo's malapropisms and also names a time of day, and the language is built on a limited vocabulary. Fun fact, the line "The things that you do" turns up in one other Beatles song, 'Think for Yourself'.

'A Hard Day's Night' is a rock and merseybeat piece, written in G major and taken at about 138 BPM. Listen for the guitar solo, Harrison's solo, doubled in unison by George Martin on piano. Also, the chords bring in add9, a first for them. The record has arpeggiated chords (12-string arpeggio on fade-out) and a heavy hi-hat. One for the curious, the harmony moves Bm → Em → Bm → G, the same shape 'And I Love Her' takes as C♯m → F♯m → C♯m → A.

The song was recorded at EMI Studio 2, cut in nine takes in under three hours, with the famous opening chord and Harrison's arpeggiated 12-string fade-out bookending the track. On this one Lennon played the Gibson J-160E, his acoustic-electric, and the kit in the room included the Ludwig Downbeat, Starr's own kit since 1963. Double tracked vocal and VariSpeed shaped the finished record, which the band first reached for on 'Misery' a year earlier. The Beatles recorded 35 songs in 1964, and this was the 12th of them, the 46th record of their career.

Lennon wrote it and shares the lead with McCartney (harmony on verses). George Martin played piano, as he also did on 'Matchbox' and 'Penny Lane', and bongos, cowbell and 12-string guitar are in there too. The electric guitar here is 12-string Rickenbacker 360/12.

The record was issued as the title song of the debut film, and it hit #1 in both the UK and US simultaneously with the album. As the track that starts A Hard Day's Night, it was certified gold by the RIAA (Capitol, certified 25 August 1964), and it is widely covered (Peter Sellers, Ramsey Lewis, Otis Redding). The record is a Grammy winner as well (1965 Best Performance by Vocal Group). In America it arrived two weeks earlier, on A Hard Day's Night (US), a United Artists record. Unlike the all-Beatles UK version, the US release included orchestral score tracks by George Martin on side two. This is their 43rd record, and the 9th of the 35 they released in 1964.