Overlooked No More: A Hard Days Night
The movie, A Hard Days Night, featuring The Beatles, overshadowed their album release with the same title. A Hard Days Night is one of the most powerful album releases by the Fab Four, and was the groups fourth release.
But while the first seven songs on A Hard Days Night are included in the classic movies soundtrack, the album contains an additional six tracks of quality Beatles music. A Hard Days Night is the only Beatles album that exclusively features John Lennon and Paul McCartney as songwriters and lead vocalists. And while so much praise has been justifiably heaped on the groups later albums; Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, and the White Album; A Hard Days Night, which debuted in 1964, merits similar recognition and plaudits. The music is extraordinarily advanced for its time. It shows in the chords, progressions, and structures. The genius of the Beatles was their uncanny ability to create deeply complex and layered music while making it all seem so easy and melodious to the ears.
A Hard Days Night opens with a fabulous guitar riff, that immediately takes you in. The tracks on the album are all created with profound music that is not only engaging, but easy to listen to from start to finish.
There is so much to hear on this album, and each song is just as intriguing as the next. A song that is considered to be one of the greatest love songs of all time, And I Love Her (by McCarthy) is a track from this album. Throughout the album, McCarthy continue to awe us with his wonderful tracks, including Can’t Buy Me Love, that is continued to be hear and song, over four decades later.
In A Hard Days Night, John Lennon’s harmonica can be frequently heard, and it never sounded better. More than any other Beatles album, A Hard Days Night allowed John to shine and showcase the width and breadth of his extraordinary musical talents.
Musically, its always interesting how some works get overshadowed, particularly as the years pass. And with the Beatles now the stuff of legend, its even more difficult to sort out and judge what was great and what was greater. But A Hard Days Night definitely merits inclusion among their top tier of albums. Songs like If I Fell; a delightful ballad; are under-appreciated in the pantheon of Beatles music, as are Things We Said Today, and Ill Be Back.
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.