The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Beatles · John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr · produced by George Martin · Parlophone · thirteen songs, about 30 minutes
Mode
Beat music: the guitar group’s love song, bright and brief, enlarged by a twelve-string guitar and a wider harmony
Mythos
The boy and the girl of the popular song; the day of labour against the night of love, love remembered from its own future, and the leave-taking that promises return, glimpsed
Phase
Thirteen songs, seven and six; the songs from the film on the first side, what else was ready on the second; from the opening chord to a farewell undecided between major and minor
Presentation
Album; thirteen songs, all by Lennon and McCartney, about thirty minutes, mono and stereo issued together; the first side from the film of the same name
Register
First-person love songs turned to one person; exuberance shaded by caution, jealousy, hurt pride and regret
Scale
The couple in courtship, doubt, jealousy, quarrel and parting, with a working day, money and time glimpsed
Governing Proposition
A beat group at the height of its first fame fills an album for the first time with its own songs: thirteen love songs of about two minutes in one bright idiom, the first side from a film. Beneath the exuberance runs a lover’s doubt, asking for assurance, unable to decide between leaving and staying, remembering the present while it happens; the record’s forms are exact at the scale of the song and arbitrary at the scale of the album.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with a chord: a single ringing shock that throws the doors open before a word is sung. It is the record’s most famous moment, and the title song that follows states itself in it and closes on a fading twelve-string figure. Between the two, John Lennon’s voice commands a song that sets the working day against the night at home, the worker coming back to rest: a pattern as old as songs of work, glimpsed in a pop song. The song does what the whole record does. It spends nothing it does not use, turns once at its bridge, and stops when it has said its piece.
The group made the album at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, between January and June 1964, on four-track tape, with George Martin producing and Norman Smith engineering, and Parlophone issued it on 10 July 1964, in mono and stereo together. Its first side holds the seven songs from the film of the same name, directed that year by Richard Lester; the second holds six more. Every song is by Lennon and McCartney. It was the band’s first album with no covers, and the only one of their albums all of whose songs are credited to that pair. Lennon leads or shares the lead on nine of the thirteen, Paul McCartney on three, George Harrison on one. The United Artists album of the same name, issued in America in June with the film’s score and fewer songs, is a different object, and this page judges the UK record.
The inheritance was American: the Brill Building songwriters, Motown, the Everly Brothers’ harmony, Buddy Holly’s group that wrote its own songs, and the band’s own first two albums, half of them covers. The turn was an album by a performing group written entirely by itself, with a harmonic vocabulary wider than the beat group’s and a new sound in Harrison’s twelve-string guitar. That is a real departure in form. It carried no stake. The record was made at the height of the band’s commercial power, as the songs of a film designed to extend it; nothing was risked, and the songs develop the band’s established manner rather than turning from it. It is a consolidation with one formal innovation, not a wager.
Movement II
If I Fell is the record’s summit of beauty and the plainest statement of its doubt, in one song. Two voices move in close harmony over a melody that seems to arrive from another key, and the words ask for assurance before the singer will fall: a lover’s caution, spoken as plainly as the form had allowed. The song spends no bar it does not use. Its two-minute form, with one turn at the bridge, is what lets the caution be stated and left unresolved; lengthened, it would say something else. Beauty and doubt are not two things in it but one, and the record is at its best where they meet.
What the record brings into the open beneath the conventional love song is doubt, and the doubt runs through it. I’ll Cry Instead and You Can’t Do That turn hurt pride and jealousy into threat; Can’t Buy Me Love sets money against love; the title song sets work against home. The sound discloses too: an exuberance, the confidence of young men speaking in their own voice, which the record never loses. The doubt shades the joy without overturning it. It stays within the love song’s frame and is stated as feeling more than articulated as meaning, and the record does not find in it a discovery larger than its songs. What it uncovers is real, and it is held at the scale of the two-minute song.
And I Love Her lifts quietly: nylon strings and soft percussion, McCartney’s voice, and a solo raised a step. Elevation on the record is of this kind, warm and frequent, the height of song rather than of grandeur, and five or six of the thirteen songs rise. The making serves it exactly: bridges placed where the song must turn, harmony used to carry feeling, Harrison’s twelve-string giving the record its colour, and the four-track sound kept clear and close by Martin and Smith. The faults fall on a share. Any Time at All, When I Get Home and I’m Happy Just to Dance with You are thinly made, and outside the title song and Can’t Buy Me Love the arrangements are simple and the drumming plain. Those songs have energy more than height.
Movement III
Things We Said Today stands at the centre of the second side and darkens it. In a minor-mode reverie that brightens at its bridge, it remembers the present while it is still happening: love seen from its own future, from a time that has not come. It touches the pattern of time and loss, as the title song touches the day of labour and the night of love, and as the last song touches the leave-taking that promises return. These are the record’s nearest approaches to an archetype, and they come through its best songs, where the doubt beneath the love song finds a shape older than the song.
They are glimpsed, not carried. The record’s figures are the boy and the girl of the popular song, particular in voice and general in everything else: no name, no place, no story beyond the moment. Nothing in the record makes its particular lovers bear more than themselves, and no song builds the patterns it touches into a structure that holds the whole. The form, the two-minute love song of 1964, makes that likely, and the record does not resist it. Leaving aside the scope its form allows, this is where the record reaches least.
The return the record receives is formal, and it is reported rather than shown here. Its songs are said to have been analysed note by note in studies of the band’s music; the opening chord is said to have drawn long argument about its voicing; the harmonic surprises of If I Fell, Things We Said Today and I’ll Be Back are reported still discussed by musicians and theorists. That yield is real, and it is the yield of a craft. The words give on a first hearing nearly all they hold, and the doubt beneath them, once heard, is known. Much of the return is to the band and its period rather than to this album, which is revisited less than the band’s later records.
Movement IV
Can’t Buy Me Love has drive, a shouted rise into its chorus, and with the title song it is among the most widely known recordings of the decade. The album has been in print since 1964, whole as issued, in mono and stereo, reissued on compact disc in its UK form and remastered. And I Love Her and If I Fell have been much recorded by others. That presence is continuous, and the fabric, the mono beat-group sound and the idiom of the love lyric of 1964, has outlived its moment: sixty-two years on, it is heard as a record, not as a document of its year.
Its presence is not wholly its own. The album as a whole is less widely present than its best-known songs and than the band’s later records, so that part of it is the presence of two singles and a catalogue; and part of it is carried by the film. The same holds for its reach. The record showed that a beat group could fill an album with its own songs, and made the self-contained, self-writing band the unit of popular music; its twelve-string sound and wider harmony enlarged what a group song could hold; and within a few years the self-written album became the norm. But much of that reach belongs to the band and to the film, and reach that belongs to the maker is not credited to the work.
The field the record entered, the album of the 1960s, is the most contested the form has had, and the band’s own later records stand high in it. Rubber Soul, a year and a half later, stands at 8.4, and Revolver at 8.9: records that disclose more, swerve further and redirected the field, where this one sings within its form. The distance between them is the distance between a step and a reorganisation. A Hard Day’s Night is the step: the first album the band wrote entirely itself, and the model of the self-writing group, made before the band turned its songs inward.
Movement V
I’ll Be Back is the record’s last word: a farewell undecided between major and minor, moving between them as the singer fails to decide between leaving and staying. It ends the record on an ache, and on the oldest shape a farewell has, the leave-taking that promises return. With the opening chord, it is one of the two places in the sequence that could not be otherwise. The title chord must open and I’ll Be Back closes well, leaving the door open, and Things We Said Today darkens the second side at its centre. Otherwise the order follows the film on the first side and fills the second, and the songs could be reordered or exchanged with no loss of what the record knows.
Inside each song almost nothing is idle, and the record’s necessity lives there. The album itself is assembled: the first side holds the film’s songs because they were the film’s, the second what else was ready. Any Time at All restates the shape of the title song, When I Get Home and I’ll Cry Instead are workmanlike, and I’m Happy Just to Dance with You, written to give Harrison a vocal, could go with no loss of meaning. One law holds it all together: the love song in the guitar group’s voice, bright and brief and turned to one person. You Can’t Do That, a jealous threat over a hard guitar riff and cowbell, and And I Love Her, hushed and tender, sit at opposite poles of feeling and obey it. But every song is a love song in one idiom and one length, and narrowness is not coherence.
Thirty minutes of love songs hold the couple fully, in courtship, doubt, jealousy, quarrel and parting, and glimpse a working day, money and time, joined to the love song rather than merely named. The family, the state, history, the sacred and the natural order are absent; the record holds what its form allows and does not reach past it. Within that form it is exact. Thirteen songs, each ending when it has said its piece, made by a band speaking for the first time entirely in its own voice, with a doubt beneath the joy that the record states and leaves unresolved, and a farewell at the close that promises to come back.
Act III · The Twelve
Thirteen songs in about thirty minutes, and the subtractive test gives two answers. Inside each song almost nothing is idle: two minutes and a few seconds, no solo longer than it needs, a bridge where the song must turn, an end as soon as it has said its piece. If I Fell spends no bar it does not use. But the album is assembled: the first side holds the film’s songs because they were the film’s, the second what else was ready. Any Time at All restates the shape of the title song, When I Get Home and I’ll Cry Instead are workmanlike, and I’m Happy Just to Dance with You, written to give George Harrison a vocal, could go with no loss of meaning. Required songs, in an arrangement that could be otherwise.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The record’s subject is young love, and what it brings into the open beneath the conventional love song is doubt. If I Fell asks for assurance before it will fall, a lover’s caution spoken as plainly as the form had allowed. I’ll Be Back cannot decide between leaving and staying, and moves between minor and major as it fails to. Things We Said Today remembers the present while it is still happening, love seen from its own future. Can’t Buy Me Love sets money against love, and the title song work against home. The sound discloses too: the confidence of young men speaking in their own voice. What holds the figure: the doubt stays within the love song’s frame, stated as feeling more than articulated as meaning.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation is warm and frequent, and its height is the height of song, not of grandeur. The opening chord is the record’s most famous moment, a ringing shock that throws the doors open. If I Fell is the summit of beauty: two voices in close harmony over a melody that seems to arrive from another key. And I Love Her lifts quietly, its solo raised a step. Things We Said Today darkens into a minor-mode reverie and brightens at its bridge; I’ll Be Back ends the record on an ache between major and minor; Can’t Buy Me Love has a shouted rise into its chorus. The rest has energy more than height. Five or six of thirteen songs rise, and none reaches transport of the medium’s highest kind.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The record builds no myth, and its figures are the boy and the girl of the popular song, particular in voice and general in everything else: no name, no place, no story beyond the moment. Where the archetype comes, it comes through the strongest songs. The title song sets the day of labour against the night of love, the worker coming home to rest, a pattern as old as songs of work. I’ll Be Back is the leave-taking that promises return, and the record closes on the oldest shape a farewell has. Things We Said Today, love remembered from a future that has not come, touches the pattern of time and loss. What holds the figure: these are glimpsed, not carried, and nothing in the record makes the particular lovers bear more than themselves.
Score: 7.1 / 10
The inheritance is American: the Brill Building songwriters, Motown, the Everly Brothers’ harmony, Buddy Holly’s group that wrote its own songs, and the band’s own first two albums, half of them covers. The turn is an album by a performing group written entirely by itself, with a harmonic vocabulary wider than the beat group’s, and a new sound in Harrison’s twelve-string guitar. That is a real departure in form. What holds the figure is the stake: the record was made at the height of the band’s commercial power, as the songs of a film designed to extend it, and its sound develops the band’s established manner rather than turning from it.
Score: 7.6 / 10
At the scale of the song the form is the knowledge: the two-minute song, with its single turn at the bridge, is what lets If I Fell’s caution or I’ll Be Back’s indecision be stated and left unresolved; lengthen them and they would say something else. At the scale of the album the form is arbitrary. The sequence is counted here, once. The title chord must open, and I’ll Be Back closes well,; Things We Said Today darkens the second side at its centre. Otherwise the order follows the film on the first side and fills the second, and the songs could be reordered or exchanged with no loss of what the record knows. Heard as thirteen singles, it would change little: that holds the figure.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Evidence over sixty-two years, formal, and reported rather than verified here. The songs are said to have been analysed note by note in studies of the band’s music; the opening chord is said to have drawn long argument about its voicing; the harmonic surprises of If I Fell, Things We Said Today and I’ll Be Back are reported still discussed by musicians and theorists. That yield is real. The semantic yield is slight: the words give on a first hearing nearly all they hold, and the doubt beneath them, once heard, is known. Much of the return the record receives is return to the band and its period, and as an album it is revisited less than the band’s later records, which the axis does not credit to it.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The field is the album of the 1960s, the band’s own later records among it. The intrinsic force is real: the record showed that a beat group could fill an album with its own songs, and made the self-contained, self-writing band the unit of popular music; its twelve-string sound and wider harmony enlarged what a group song could hold. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: within a few years the self-written album became the norm. What holds the figure is attribution: much of that reach belongs to the band and to the film, not to this album, and reach that belongs to the maker is not credited to the work.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Survival is weighed over sixty-two years, on form, presence and fabric. The form is whole: the album survives as issued, in mono and stereo. Presence is continuous: in print since 1964, its title song and Can’t Buy Me Love among the most widely known recordings of the decade, And I Love Her and If I Fell much recorded by others. Two charges hold it under 9.0. The album as a whole is less widely present than its best-known songs and than the band’s later records, so that its presence is partly that of two singles and a catalogue; and part of its presence is carried by the film. The fabric is of 1964, the mono beat-group sound and the idiom of the love lyric, and it has outlived its moment.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Command of the recorded medium. The songcraft is the making, and it is load-bearing: thirteen songs of exact melodic shape, bridges placed where the song must turn, and harmony used to carry feeling, in If I Fell’s two voices, the key lift for And I Love Her’s solo and I’ll Be Back’s shifting mode. John Lennon’s voice commands the title song, Paul McCartney’s And I Love Her. Harrison’s twelve-string gives the record its colour, and George Martin and Norman Smith keep the four-track sound clear and close. The faults are more than one: several songs are thinly made, Any Time at All, When I Get Home and I’m Happy Just to Dance with You among them, and the arrangements are simple and the drumming plain outside the title song and Can’t Buy Me Love.
Score: 8.4 / 10
One law governs the record: the love song in the guitar group’s voice, bright, brief and spoken in the first person to a lover. The two most distant elements test it. And I Love Her, acoustic, tender and hushed, and You Can’t Do That, a jealous threat over a hard guitar riff and cowbell, sit at opposite poles of feeling, and both obey the law: the same two minutes, the same voice turned to one person, the same turn at the bridge. What holds the figure is range: every song is a love song in one idiom and one length, and narrowness is not coherence. Things We Said Today and I’ll Be Back widen it toward time and ambivalence without straining the law.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Judged on what thirty minutes of love songs hold, with no discount for the form, which the figure describes rather than compensates. The couple is held fully, in courtship, doubt, jealousy, quarrel and parting. Consciousness enters in If I Fell and I’ll Be Back as a lover’s caution and indecision. Labour is glimpsed in the title song’s working day, money in Can’t Buy Me Love, time and memory in Things We Said Today, and these are joined to the love song, not merely named. What holds the figure at the floor: the family, the state, history, the sacred and the natural order are absent, and most of what is present is one order seen from several sides. The record holds what its form allows and does not reach past it.
Score: 6.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.8, then The Made at 8.4 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.2. A record whole and in print for sixty-two years, with two songs among the most widely known of the decade; songcraft load-bearing across thirteen songs, in exact melodies, bridges placed where the song must turn and harmony that carries feeling; and the first album a beat group wrote entirely itself, which made the self-writing band the model.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.0, at its floor: the couple held fully and a working day, money and time glimpsed, with the family, the state, history, the sacred and the natural order absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.1, the boy and the girl of the popular song, with the patterns of labour, farewell and time glimpsed and not carried; then The Living Form at 7.3, a form that is the knowledge in each song and arbitrary across the album.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5, by a tenth. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.3, The Made at 8.4, The Inner Law at 7.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.8 clears the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.2, The Unconcealment at 7.6, The Swerve at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.1 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.1, and The Living Form, 7.3, both below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, meets its own floor of 6.0 exactly. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the UK album as released by Parlophone on 10 July 1964, mono and stereo issued together, thirteen songs in their original order, seven on the first side and six on the second, about thirty minutes; produced by George Martin, engineered by Norman Smith, and recorded at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London, between January and June 1964 on four-track tape; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception. Side one: A Hard Day’s Night; I Should Have Known Better; If I Fell; I’m Happy Just to Dance with You; And I Love Her; Tell Me Why; Can’t Buy Me Love. Side two: Any Time at All; I’ll Cry Instead; Things We Said Today; When I Get Home; You Can’t Do That; I’ll Be Back. The United Artists album of the same name and the film are separate works and are not judged; the film bears on the record’s reach and presence only. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and the running time is approximate. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. The study of the record’s harmony and of its opening chord is reported rather than verified. Facts that could not be verified, among them session dates and overdubs, the place where one song was recorded, which of the two mixes the band attended to, a keyboard part in the title song, a vocal flaw in one song, and accounts of the record’s influence given by other musicians, are not given.