She Loves You

Song Meaning and Background of She Loves You by The Beatles

"She Loves You" is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and of the rock band the Beatles for release in 1963. It remains the band's best-selling single in the United Kingdom and was the top-selling single of the 1960s there by any artist.

Lennon and McCartney started composing "She Loves You" after a concert at the Majestic Ballroom in Newcastle upon Tyne during their tour with Roy Orbison and Gerry and the Pacemakers. They began writing the song on the tour bus, and continued later that night at their hotel eventually completing it the following day at McCartney's family home in Forthlin Road, Liverpool.

In 2000, McCartney said the initial idea for the song began with Bobby Rydell's hit "Forget Him" with its call and response pattern, and that "as often happens, you think of one song when you write another ... I'd planned an 'answering song' where a couple of us would sing 'she loves you' and the other ones would answer 'yeah yeah'. We decided that was a crummy idea but at least we then had the idea of a song called 'She Loves You'. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it – John and I, sitting on twin beds with guitars."

This idea was attributed by Lennon to McCartney in 1980: "It was Paul's idea: instead of singing 'I love you' again, we'd have a third party. That kind of little detail is still in his work. He will write a story about someone. I'm more inclined to write about myself.

Lennon, being mindful of Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up", wanted something equally stirring: "I don't know where the 'yeah yeah yeah' came from [but] I remember when Elvis did 'All Shook Up' it was the first time in my life that I had heard 'uh huh', 'oh yeah', and 'yeah yeah' all sung in the same song".

The song also included a number of falsetto "wooooo"s, which Lennon acknowledged as being inspired by the Isley Brothers' recording of "Twist and Shout", which the Beatles had earlier recorded, and which had also been inserted into the group's previous single, "From Me to You".

As Lennon later said: "We stuck it in everything".

McCartney recalls them playing the finished song on acoustic guitars to his father Jim at home immediately after the song was completed: "We went into the living room and said 'Dad, listen to this. What do you think? And he said 'That's very nice son, but there's enough of these Americanisms around. Couldn't you sing 'She loves you, yes, yes, yes!' At which point we collapsed in a heap and said 'No, Dad, you don't quite get it!'"

Their recording engineer Norman Smith had a somewhat similar reaction, later recounting, "I was setting up the microphone when I first saw the lyrics on the music stand, 'She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah!' I thought, Oh my God, what a lyric! This is going to be one that I do not like. But when they started to sing it – bang, wow, terrific, I was up at the mixer jogging around."

Lyrics of She Loves You by The Beatles

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

You think you lost your love

Well, I saw her yesterday

It's you she's thinking of

And she told me what to say

She says she loves you

And you know that can't be bad

Yes, she loves you

And you know you should be glad

She said you hurt her so

She almost lost her mind

But now she says she knows

You're not the hurting kind

She says she loves you

And you know that can't be bad

Yes, she loves you

And you know you should be glad, ooh

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

And with a love like that

You know you should be glad

You know it's up to you

I think it's only fair

Pride can hurt you too

Apologize to her

Because she loves you

And you know that can't be bad

Yes, she loves you

And you know you should be glad, ooh

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

With a love like that

You know you should be glad

With a love like that

You know you should be glad

With a love like that

You know you should be glad

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah