A Hard Day's Night Review

This is where the band stops being interpreters. Thirteen songs, all their own, and almost none of them wasted. The opening chord is the most analysed noise in pop for a reason: it announces a record with no throat clearing at all. If I Fell is the first real evidence that Lennon could write something fragile without hiding behind a shout, and the two part harmony on it is arranged with a care that nothing on the first two albums attempted.

Can't Buy Me Love swings on a blues shape and gets out in two minutes. And I Love Her borrows a Spanish guitar figure and treats it seriously. The electric twelve string is everywhere and it is the sound that a great deal of American guitar pop was built from within eighteen months. The lyrics are still mostly about girls and mostly in the second person, but the phrasing has got clever, and the sequencing never lets a slow one sit next to another slow one. Short, bright, unbeaten by anything else released that year.