No Reply

The song carries the motifs of plea, dialogue and relationship. A curiosity, the title turns on a negative, which the band first reached for on 'It Won't Be Long' a year earlier, and it reaches once for triple rhyme ("I/guy/reply"). Curiously, the line "I know that you" turns up in 3 Beatles songs, among them 'Act Naturally' and 'It Won't Be Long'.

'No Reply' runs near 124 BPM in C major, and it is a pop and folk rock piece end to end. The record has a melisma, one syllable sung across several notes. Also, the harmony takes in an add9 chord, heard on eleven Beatles records in all, and McCartney reached for it more than the others, on six of them. The song is unusual here, in that it never settles into verses and choruses. Interestingly, the chords run F → G7 → C → F → G7 → C → Am, a progression it shares with one other Beatles song, 'Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand'.

Cut in eight takes at Abbey Road with George Martin overdubbing piano on the bridge. What you are hearing is Lennon and Harrison's acoustics, played on the Gibson J-160E, 1964 being the year it turns up most. Double tracked vocal shaped the finished record, as on 139 of their records. The Beatles recorded 35 songs in 1964, and this was the 26th of them, the 60th record of their career.

Lennon both wrote and sang it. George Martin played piano, as he also did on 'Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!' and 'Penny Lane'. The handclaps are all four Beatles.

This track was never a single, and it reached the public with Beatles For Sale, on December 4, 1964. It starts the album, and in America it arrived eleven days later, on Beatles '65, a Capitol record. This track was the 22nd of 35 released in that year, and the 56th they ever made.