I Saw Her Standing There

Please Please Me, Track 1, 1963

Please Please Me was The Beatles first full-length record, and was released in the UK in March of 1963. The album was recorded largely in order, over the course of a single day. "I Saw Her Standing There" was released as the b-side to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the US and the single topped the US charts for seven weeks (more history).

I Love:

• Of course, the 1-2-3-FAWR intro
• The hand claps
• The way the guitar solo sounds like it was recorded in a tunnel
• Paul's scream at the beginning of said solo
• The ringing-chord ending that would become so characteristic of The Beatles' sound

From the beginning (though of course they had singles before this), The Beatles' sound is very distinct. In my opinion, it's a very endearing sort of jangle that makes you want to keep listening. And my opinion is really what matters here. The hand claps are undeniably dorky, the sort of thing that B-list girl groups were doing at the time, not rugged young Brits. But The Beatles have admitted that, being Brits, they didn't realize how uncool they might have seemed in the states.

I mean, if you think about it, the lyric "my heart went 'boom'" is pretty juvenile. From the perspective of all these years, I can brush it off as just being the teenage years of rock-and-roll, but hopefully the teens of 1963 were intelligent enough to realize that the lyric was not Shakespeare by any means. It's those hand claps and the ringing and echoing guitar that appeals. And any singer willing enough to yelp like that on the first track is worth the money, in my book.