On this day in 1964, The Beatles’ She Loves You hits number one in the US

The song was penned by Lennon and McCartney during their 1963 tour with Roy Orbison and Gerry and the Pacemakers, with the majority written on their tourbus before being finished at McCartney’s family home in Liverpool. McCartney says that the inspiration for the song came from Bobby Rydell’s hit Forget Him which featured a call and response pattern. The original idea had a couple of the Beatles singing “she loves you” and the rest answering “yeah yeah”. This version was soon scrapped, with the “yeah yeah yeah” being incorporated into the chorus. 

The song was actually released in the UK in August of 1963, and immediately performed well on the charts as thousands of fans that had been anticipating the release rushed to stores, setting several sales records in the process. In the US however, the band weren’t enjoying the same level of success and when the song was initially released in September of 1963, it received little radio airtime and sold only an estimated thousand copies. On the 22nd of November, CBS News ran a five minute segment on Beatlemania, heavily featuring She Loves You, and the band capitalised on the resulting interest by rush-releasing I Want to Hold Your Hand, which reached number one by the end of January. Shortly after The Beatles headed to the US to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, kick-starting the so-called British Invasion and sending people into stores to buy more Beatles music.

After their television appearances, She Loves You climbed to the number two spot, before replacing I Want to Hold Your Hand, becoming one of only two artists to ever hold the top two spots simultaneously. The success wouldn’t stop there though, as they were joined by three more songs at the top of the charts, becoming the first and only artists to ever hold the top five simultaneously with Please Please Me at five, I Want to Hold Your Hand at four, She Loves You at three, Twist and Shout at two and Can’t Buy Me Love at number one. This astounding feat demonstrated the immense popularity of the band and would begin their reign as the biggest act of the 1960s.