January 20, 2010

I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles (1964)

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[1960-1964 Best Songs]

Billboard Top 100, 1964, #95 [unavailable on iTunes]

I feel like an idiot. For someone who knows the Beatles as well as I do, how is it I thought I Saw Her Standing There was NOT written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. I thought it was a cover, like Twist and Shout. Dumb-ass.

But, but really - it's too polished for a Beatles's song, circa 1963. The bridge ("well my HEART went BOOM as I CROSSED that room...") sounds too much like it was written by a seasoned professional songwriter, not the 21-year-old McCartney with help from his 23-year-old band-mate.

I Saw Her Standing There proved the Beatles weren't just a teeny-bopper band. They could compete with the best songwriters of the era.

Musically, it demonstrated the same. Here were these kids making R&B as if they'd been doing it for years, going head-to-head with Motown... and winning.

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