Oh! Darling

The motifs it works with are love, plea and hardness. There is pastiche in the writing (1950s doo-wop ballad style), and the Beatles had done the same on 'When I'm Sixty-Four' 3 years earlier. The title has an exclamation mark in it, 4 songs do it, and 1964 has more of them than any other year. The language is built on a limited vocabulary. The writing draws on doo-wop and R&B. Worth a footnote, the line "Believe me when I tell you" turns up in one other Beatles song, 'Chains'.

'Oh! Darling' is a hard rock and doo-wop song, Little Richard influences showing through (roughened vocal style), played at roughly 70 BPM in the key of A major. The tune carries an appoggiatura, a note that leans in before it settles, and the Beatles had done the same on 'This Boy' 6 years earlier, with the bar running to 12/8. You can hear a belted vocal. Also, the harmony takes in an augmented chord, which turns up on fourteen of their records, and Lennon reached for it more than the others, on nine of them. A curiosity, its Bm7 → E7 → Bm7 → E7 → A → D → A chord progression is the move 'Piggies' makes as Fm → B♭ → Fm7 → B♭7 → E♭ → A♭ → E♭7. As a matter of detail, 'Yes It Is' plays F♯m7 → B7 → E → A and 'Lady Madonna' plays Dm7 → G7 → C → F, the same progression in different keys, which 'Piggies' and this song also make.

This song was put together at EMI Studio 3. McCartney sang the lead first thing in the morning over several days to roughen his voice, after rejecting his earlier smoother takes. The sessions for it ran from 20 April to 11 August 1969, and the Hamburg Steinway was played by Paul McCartney. 1969 brought 30 songs, and this was the 16th of them, the 199th record of their career.

McCartney wrote and sang it, and there is a role swap on it, Harrison on bass guitar. It was cut by the four of them with no one else playing, true of 12 of the 30 songs they cut in 1969.

The song was released September 26, 1969, as part of Abbey Road. By this point the mono mix had been abandoned, and this song never had one. This song was the 11th of the 26 records the Beatles released in that year, and the 187th they ever made.