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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade: The Fab Four Sweep Edition
00:49:32
How a major label screw up helped The Beatles sweep the Billboard Top Five.
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Transcript37 lines
- [00:00]
Chris Melanctha
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:04]
Beatles (singing parts)
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you tomorrow I miss you Remember I'll always be true.
- [00:16]
Chris Melanctha
Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate and Panoply about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfit, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series. On today's show, it's been called the most famous week in pop chart history. The week in 1964 when the most famous group in rock and roll history dominated Billboard's iconic Hot 100. Topped off by this song, can buy me love.
- [00:49]
Beatles (singing parts)
Can buy me love.
- [00:54]
Chris Melanctha
It was the first dizzying peak of Beatlemania America finally joining Britain in a total frenzy over the Liverpool moptops in the pages of Billboard Magazine, the US music industry's bible. The Beatles sweep of the charts was epic. They locked down the entire top five. 53 years later, that feat has yet to be repeated. But what if the whole thing was the result of a colossal mistake? What if the Beatles total control of the Hot 100 reflected not just their unprecedented popularity, but but how badly the music industry had dropped the ball? Today on Hit Parade, I'll dissect the week. The Beatles set multiple Hot 100 records, including the one they still hold to this day for total Top five dominance. We'll talk about the perfect storm of circumstances that made that chart record possible. You might think the Fab Four's American record label would be exulting in this outrageous success. And of course they were. But in one sense, this moment caught them flat footed. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It reflected just how fast Beatlemania had grown beyond the control of the music business and the Beatles themselves. And that's where your Hit Parade marches today, the week ending April 4, 1964, when the song you just heard, can't Buy Me Love, by the Beatles, hurtled to number one.
- [02:14]
Beatles (singing parts)
I don't care too much for money Money can't buy me Love.
- [02:23]
Chris Melanctha
It leapt over four other Beatles records sitting at numbers two through five on that week's Hot 100. By the way, those other four songs in that historic week were as at number two, the Beatles cover of the Isley Brothers classic Twist and Shout. Out. At number three, the song that had been number one the prior week, she Loves you. At number four, another former number one, the smash I Want to hold, you'd handle.
- [03:15]
Beatles (singing parts)
Oh yeah, I tell you something I think you'll understand when I say that something I wanna hold Your hand, I wanna hold your hand.
- [03:32]
Chris Melanctha
And finally, at number five, please please me. It's a P. The classic radio Show American Top 40 didn't exist in 1964. Casey Kasem didn't launch it until 1970 because, oh, what a great week for a countdown show that would have been. Back then, the Billboard charts were mostly for folks in the recording industry, not the general public or chart geeks like me. On our podcast show page, we've posted a Billboard link that shows a photo of the original printed chart's top five. There you'll see those five song titles in positions one through five running down the left side of the chart. Running down the right side, you'll see the word Beatles five times. But look closely, there's one other bit of small print on that chart. In addition to song title and artist, Billboard publishes the record label for each hit on the Hot 100. And those five Beatles hits, they're not on the same label. Two of the songs, Can't Buy Me Love at one and I Want to hold you'd Hand at four, are listed on Capitol Records, the flagship label with the iconic building in Los Angeles that looks like a stack of records. Capitol controlled the rights to distribute the Beatles in America, but they only controlled two of these five smash singles in early 64. The other three hits listed in Billboard are on three different labels. Twist and Shout at number two is on the Tolley label. She Loves yous at number three is on a label called Swan. And Please Please me at number 5 is on VJ. Why am I focusing on these tiny bits of fine print on this old Billboard chart? Because this record label detail tells you a lot about the odds the Beatles overcame to arrive at this moment. In fact, to understand this moment in 1964, you have to first listen to this song from 1962. Ha. Believe it or not, that sultry clarinet instrumental is is Billboard's top hit of 1962. It's called Stranger on the Shore and it's by a gentleman who called himself Mr. Acker Bilk. Yes, the Mr. Appeared on all his vinyl record labels. This Somerset, England native, born Bernard Stanley Bilk, had been a hitmaker in the UK for several years when his late 1961 single, Stranger on the Shore took hold in the United States. It topped the Hot 100 in May of 1962, making Mr. Acker bilk the first Brit to top the American charts in the rock era. Not exactly a rocking song, is it? Well, it wasn't the only number one hit of its kind that year. Here's another instrumental that chopped the charts later in 1962. That at least sounds more like rock and roll. That instrument you're hearing is a protosynthesizer called a Clavioline. And this surf rock ditty is Telstar, named after an early NASA communications satellite. It's by a London group led by eccentric producer Joe Meek, who called themselves the Tornadoes. And when Telstar reached the summit of the Hot 100 just before Christmas 1962, the tornadoes became the first British group to top the American char. Neither Mr. Ackerbilk nor the Tornadoes ever scored another US top 40 hit. In fact, after their two respective fluke hits in 1962, there were no British chart toppers in America in all of 1963, which says a lot about the state of British music in this period. To the US recording industry, England was a musical backwater. Rock and roll was, after all, an American invention. But we weren't much interested in British music before rock either. Even in the 1940s and 50s, British artists were relegated to the lower rungs of our charts. The only number one by a British artist prior to the launch of the Hot 100 and the commercial breakthrough of rock and roll was a single by Vera Lin, famous for the World War II classic we'll meet Again, who topped Billboard's best sellers chart for a couple of months in 1952 with Auf Vida Sane.
- [08:46]
Beatles (singing parts)
Sweetheart, this lovely day has flown away the time has come to.
- [09:01]
Chris Melanctha
Otherwise UK acts were nowhere on US radio, both in the crooner era and in the early rock era, right through the early 60s. This helps explain why in 1962 and 1963, America was not predisposed to care about a group of Scouse lads named John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr when barely out of their teens, they first emerged in England. Dear hit parade listener, I don't imagine I need to tell you who the Beatles were. Quartet of Liverpudlians, the house band at seedy Hamburg nightclubs, disdainers of barbers, and oh yeah, the inventors of the self contained rock band as we now know it.
- [09:44]
Beatles (singing parts)
It won't belong, yeah, yeah, yeah it won't belong, yeah, yeah, yeah it won't belong, yeah Till I belong to you since you left me.
- [10:02]
Chris Melanctha
The stations of the cross of the Beatles origin story are all too familiar to music fans. If you need a refresher course, I recommend any number of books, including Bob Spitz's thick biography the Beatles, Philip Norman's compact Shout, Mark Lewison's deeply researched tune in, or Rob Sheffield's just published and superlative appreciation. Dreaming the Beatles the part of the Beatles history I want to focus on right now is their shabby treatment by the music business of the early 60s, first in England, then in America. Indeed, the Beatles early story is all about posh urbanites underestimating them. In England, they were looked down upon by Londoners as provincial Liverpudlians. Notoriously, the Beatles were turned down by a half dozen British record companies, including emi, parent company of the label that eventually wound up signing them. Some executives scarcely listened to their demos for the simple reason that London based labels wouldn't bother with a band from Liverpool. Perhaps the cruelest tease was the Decca label, whose artists and repertoire team schlepped the band into a London studio on New Year's Day 1962, recorded their audition, dithered about it for a few weeks and then turned them down. Decca A and R head Dick Rowe, the man who turned down the signing of a lifetime, dismissed the lads with the now immortal line. Groups with guitars are on the way out, a quote so infamous and oft repeated in the 70s. Monty Python's Eric Idle and Saturday Night Live's Dan Aykroyd riffed on it in the satirical TV movie the Ruddles.
- [11:40]
Dick Rowe
You said that guitar groups were on their way out and would never make any money at all, all in the 60s. Yes, I did. You turned your back on all those millions of sales, all those hundreds of gold records. Yeah, that's right. What's it like to be such an asshole?
- [12:03]
Chris Melanctha
What? To be fair, Dick Rowe wasn't entirely wrong. Straight up guitar groups were experiencing a bit of a dry spell after the early rock and roll explosion of the mid to late 50s. The charts in 1961 and 62 were full of first rate lively records, but they weren't necessarily by rock combos. Hits in this period ranged from light pop singles like Bruce channel's harmonica fueled 62 hit hey Baby. To the earliest hits from the Motown hit Factory, like the first number one by the Marvelettes, To the classic Brill building pop and R B songs written by songwriter pros like Jerry Goffin and Carole King for artists like Little Evil. However, what Dick Rowe at Decca and all the other dismissive label bosses failed to hear was that the Beatles were synthesizing all of these influences into something new. Indeed, they had already worked up covers of several of these songs or adapted their styles into Mersey Beat singles of their own. But to the UK music moguls, the Beatles were a rehash of aging rock combos like Cliff Richard and the Shadows. So when the Beatles finally Signed to a UK label in June of 1962, it was with the then lowly parlour Telephone Records, a subsidiary of EMI led by producer George Martin, that at the time made most of its profits from comedy recordings by the likes of Peter Sellars. Accordingly, the band's chart fortunes for that first year were limited. Starting with this modest ditty, You know I love you, Remember Bruce Channel's harmonica happy hey baby. When Channel and his sideman, legendary blues Instrumentalist Delbert McClinton toured England in 1962, they met a young John Lennon who learned the song's harmonica Intro from McClinton and adapted it for Love Me Do, Recorded with producer George Martin in September 1962, Love Me do did decently for a debut single reaching number 17 on the UK charts. It was boosted in part by Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who bought up extra stock of the single for his record shop and nudged it up the charts. But by the start of 1963, the Beatles boosted their stock after they recorded this song, Please Please Me, a song John Lennon originally wrote in a slow, stately Roy Orbison mode before speeding it up at George Martin's behest, became the group's first major hit in their homeland. It topped both the New Musical Express and Melody Maker charts and reached number two on the official record retailer chart, the British equivalent of Billboard. Please Please Me was also the first Beatles single released in America. But if you were a Yank listening to the radio in 1963, you'd almost certainly never have heard it. This is where the Beatles year long quest to become a hit act in our country began its twisted journey. As I mentioned Parlophone, the Beatles label was owned by major recording group emi. Among the other labels EMI owned was America's Capitol Records. That gave Capitol right of first refusal on issuing EMI's British repertoire in America. But the record men in Hollywood virtually never took that option. Remember coming out of 1962, even after hits like Mr. Acker, Bilkes and the Tornadoes, British music was just not considered viable in the American market. Given what oddities those hits were, you can perhaps understand why. According to Bob Spitz's Beatles bio, even though EMI owned capital, they rarely issued commands to the American label out of fear of antitrust action by regulators. The American label called the shots and their call on virtually every British record was a no. So EMI tried a different channel. In 1962, frustrated with capital, EMI had set up a subsidiary, Transglobal Music, to lease its records across the United States to whatever label was willing to distribute them. First they tried sending Love Me do and Please Please Me to legendary American mogul Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records. He politely passed. Then they tried the rest of the US majors, including Columbia Records, RCA and Mercury. None expressed interest. Finally, EMI tried their luck with Chicago independent label VJ Records, founded and run by the African American husband and wife team of Vivian Carter and James Bracken, the V and J namesakes of the label. VJ made its bones with smash R and B records like Gene Chandler's Duke of Earl, And the label hit pay dirt in 1962 with Jersey boy doo wop group the Four Seasons. When EMI came knocking in early 1963, Vijay had already scored a hit with an earlier EMI single by a British artist, Frank Ifield's yodeling ballad I remember you, which hit the top five on the Hot 100 in late 62.
- [18:24]
Beatles (singing parts)
I remember you.
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Chris Melanctha
You'Re the one who made my dreams come true.
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Beatles (singing parts)
A few kisses.
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Chris Melanctha
So VJ, already favorably disposed toward EMI's product, accepted please Please Me and issued the single in February 1963. Think of it. The first label to issue a Beatles single in America was a black owned imprint based on Chicago's south side. If the Beatles themselves had actually been paying attention to these business machinations, they probably would have thought of this as the coolest rock and roll credibility move ever. So unknown were the Beatles in America at this time that on the label of this first VJ single of Please Please Me, the band's name was Ms. With two T's in Beatles. Unfortunately, that's not all Vijay botched. The label would not prove the Beatles salvation in the states. In 1963, VJ was distracted by a royalty dispute with the Four Seasons, who were angling to leave the label for a better deal. And they were reeling from, no kidding, a gambling debt VJs president ran up in Las Vegas, which decimated the company's 1963 operating budget. Still, EMI had at least succeeded in getting a Beatles single issued in America. VJ wound up releasing the Beatles next single in America as well. In England, anticipation was so high for the follow up to Please Please Me in the spring of 1963 that this next single debuted in the British top 10, an unheard of opening on the UK charts at the time. Cleverly, Lennon and McCartney had written the song specifically to make their teen followers swoon. A classic bit of fan service called from me to you.
- [20:18]
Beatles (singing parts)
If there's anything that you want, if there's anything I can do Just call on me and I'll send it along with love from me to you I.
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Chris Melanctha
Got From Me to youo holds a particular distinction. It was the first Beatles song to appear on a Billboard chart, any Billboard chart. It missed the Hot 100, but it appeared on the sidebar called Bubbling under the Hot 100. Basically a short list of songs that just missed the flagship chart. On this list, which starts with position 101, From Me to youo peaked in August 1963 at number 116. Not exactly a British invasion. In an even greater ignominy, From Me to youo had already appeared on the Hot 100 two months earlier in a cover from American artist Del Shannon. The runaway singer took his cover to number 77 that June.
- [21:31]
Beatles (singing parts)
Just call on me and I'll send it along with love from me to you.
- [21:39]
Chris Melanctha
Both the Del Shannon cover and the Beatles original hitting the bottom rungs of the US charts arguably did more harm than good. The Hot 100 is a hybrid chart that combines sales and airplay of singles. So even if a single got a chance in stores, if DJ saw it wasn't performing the, that wasn't helpful. As Bob Spitz chronicles in his Beatles bio, when the second VJ single, From Me to youo was released, American disc jockeys ignored it completely, a silence even more devastating than scorn. Now, with another record due out, EMI's Paul Marshall went back to Capitol Records. Capitol usually offered a song and dance to soften the rejection of an English act, but this time the pass was brutally direct. Capital's Dave Dexter proclaimed the Beatles stone cold dead in the US Marketplace. The single EMI was trying to distribute this time was the Beatles catchiest hit yet. She Loves yous, an exuberant record that for many who remember the first wave of Beatlemania, utterly defined the group in the public imagination. The three part harmonies of John, Paul and George, the yeah, yeah yeah chorus, and the high pitched ooze that gave the boys an excuse to shake their floppy haircuts around like bobbleheads. It was irresistible. The problem was that by late summer 1963, American label VG was in such a state, thanks to its damaged finances, that it couldn't even accept she Loves you from EMI even if it wanted to. So EMI's Transglobal team begged an even smaller regional label, Philadelphia's Swann Records, to license and release the single. Swann had scored exactly one big single on the Hot 100, teen idol Freddie Cannon's 1962 hit Palisades Park, a number two hit written by future Gong show host Chuck Barris.
- [23:55]
Beatles (singing parts)
Wheel When I Fell in Love Dynamic.
- [24:00]
Chris Melanctha
In Swan's deal to distribute the Beatles She Loves yous, practically no money changed hands. EMI just wanted the single out in America. Again. Let's pause on how remarkable this is. The Beatles British label, less than six months before the band's arrival on US Shores, is begging a tiny label in America to release a song as legendary as she Loves yous for essentially nothing. But the Beatles were cold in the States because nobody with any promotional muscle in this vast country of ours had made it their mission to grab Americans by the lapels and tell them to pay attention. It's easy to be cynical about the music industrial complex, but this is what it does. It clues the public into what's cool. Occasionally the complex is even right when the story of the Beatles breakthrough in America is toldand goodness knows it has been told enough times. It is a poetic tale of the US public organically catching Beatlemania from England like a virus at a time when our defenses were down in the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. But a more complete version of this tale would chronicle just how stubborn Capitol Records, EMI's American subsidiary, was about the band. Beatles biographies chronicle a series of shady, dismissive encounters. Beatles manager Brian Epstein showing up in the States as late as November 63and finding no one willing to attend a reception for him. Even as the Beatles were racking up record breaking sales in the uk the West Coast Capitol label issuing yet another refusal to meet with him, the managing director of emi, Len Wood having to personally fly over to New York. And for the first time ever in the EMI Capitol relationship, Command Capital's president to issue the Beatles next single, like it or Not. Even then, Capitol planning to press only 5,000 copies of that single and scheduling its release for a full month after Christmas. The music business is and always has been a relationship business. And if, as we say in this country, all politics is local, the story of the Beatles breakthrough is that all music is provincial. You root for the home team and tell the Arvistes and the Carpetbaggers to buzz off. If Americans finally had to catch Beatlemania themselves, it's only because the folks at Capitol were doing everything in their power to prevent Beatlemania's spread. So what finally did it? We'll talk about that after a quick break. So what finally broke the Beatles in America? Even before the legendary Ed Sullivan, it was a Washington D.C. teenager named Marcia Albert who caught a televised news report about The Beatles. And in mid December 1963 called her local radio station WWDC in our nation's capital to request that they play something by the band. The station found an import copy of the Beatles brand new single, the one Capitol wasn't planning to issue until the dead of January 1964. The station even let Ms. Albert introduce this song live on the air. That single was I want to hold you'd hand.
- [27:24]
Beatles (singing parts)
Let me hold your hand I wanna hold your hand and when I touch you I feel happy.
- [27:35]
Chris Melanctha
Early radio airplay kicked off by WWDC forced Capitol Records to rush release the 45 RPM vinyl single to market two days after Christmas 1963, a month ahead of schedule. At long last, Americans were given the chance to sample England's hottest group. And they wanted in on this whole Beatlemania thing again. Most commemorative articles you'll read about the Beatles US breakthrough center around their arrival in New York City to play the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964. And let's give Sullivan credit. He booked the group himself way ahead of schedule after visiting England in the fall and witnessing the pandemonium they were causing in person. But the fact is the Beatles were topping the US charts before they even set foot on US soil. As the calendar flipped from 1963-64, Americans adoption of the Fab Four as their own happened remarkably quickly. I Want to hold you'd hand debuted on Billboard's Hot 100 for the week ending January 18, 1964, all the way up at no. 45. In just two short weeks, the song hurtled first to no. 3, then to number one. Capitol Records was not the only immediate beneficiary of the Beatles newfound chart dominance. When I Want to hold you'd hand debuted on the chart in mid January, it was the only Beatles song on the chart. But that wasn't true for long. By the time Hand took over the top slot for the week ending February 1st, it had been joined by two more Beatles singles, she loves you at number 21 and Please please me at number 68. How was this happening so fast? Remember, capital had dithered for months before finally issuing any Beatles singles in the United States at all. Where were these other hits coming from? Simple, they weren't on Capitol. VJ was the label of record on Please Please Me, and the little Swan label was finally seeing a payoff on she Loves yous. Both of these US indie labels were pressing new copies of the respective singles they had first issued months ago to feed a now hungry market. The week ending February 8th hand, she loves yous and Please Please Me were joined by a fourth Beatles single, I Saw Her Standing There, debuting at number 68. While the other three singles were all on the rise. I Saw Her Standing There was on Capitol, but it wasn't actually a new release. It was the B side of the I want to hold you'd hand. 45, the irresistible song was receiving so much radio airplay it was now charting on its own. One week after that. Probably the strangest debut to date. The Beatles cover of traditional Scottish folk song My Bonnie, a song they recorded as a backing group to Hamburg, Germany based rock and roll singer Tony Sheridan Back in 1961, the year before they landed their own recording contract. After the Beatles explosion in America, the MGM label dug the single out of their vaults and threw it on the market. At this point, anything with the Beatles name on it, even this ungainly cover sung by the German accented Englishman Sheridan would sell, it was a quite literal British invasion. The Beatles were colonizing ever larger pieces of American chart territory. And the hits just kept on coming. By the first week of March, From Me to youo, another old VJ single licensed from EMI the prior year, had made its belated Hot 100 debut. And then in mid March, VJ kicked it up a notch. They actually issued a new Beatles single that had never been released on 45 in England at all.
- [32:06]
Beatles (singing parts)
Come on, come on, come on, come on baby Come on baby, come on out.
- [32:23]
Chris Melanctha
Recorded one year earlier as the last track on the Beatles debut album, Please Please Me. Twist and Shout was delivered deliberately, left by producer George Martin to the end of the all day recording session as John Lennon was fighting off a winter cold. In a wonderful passage from his new book Dreaming, the Beatles critic Rob Sheffield chronicles the recording of the historic disc's last track. Quote they bashed out their first album in a mammoth all day session, saving nothing for later, knowing their first chance to get out of Liverpool could be their last. You can hear John completely blow out his throat in the last song they cut that night, Twist and Shout. In England, Twist and Shout was never issued as a single. It was an album cut, albeit a beloved one. It was the last song the Fab Four performed for the Queen in November 1963 at the Royal Command Performance. The song John memorably proceeded with the request.
- [33:32]
Beatles (singing parts)
The people in the cheaper seats clap your hands and the rest of you if you just rattle your jewelry.
- [33:44]
Chris Melanctha
Thank you.
- [33:45]
Beatles (singing parts)
We'd like to sing a song called Twist and Shout.
- [33:49]
Chris Melanctha
Twist and Shout had never realized its full potential as A hit for anyone, it was written in 1961 by American songwriters Phil Medley and Burt Burns and turned into a sizable hit in 1962 by Cincinnati family act the Isley Brothers, who took it to number 17 on the pop charts. By issuing the Beatles version as a single. At the height of Beatlemania in America, VJ Records finally gave Twist and Shout the chance to become a smash. Cleverly, VJ issued the single not on the main label, but on a new subsidiary label, Tolly, named after Vivian Carter's brother Calvin Tally Carter. They basically founded the imprint just to issue new Beatles singles. VJ was finding every possible loophole in their agreement with EMI to Release as much Fab 4 product as possible. The Tali single of Twist and Shout debuted on the Hot 100 the week ending March 14, 1964. By the way, an aside and a great piece of chart trivia. Generation Xers, who remember the 80s as fondly as I do, will recall the prominent placement of the Beatles Twist and shout in the 1986 John Hughes movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. What do you think Ferris is gonna do? It's gonna be a fragile Venus. Twist and Shout actually charted on the Hot 100 again, peaking at number 23 in September of 86. That made it the only Beatles song to enjoy two full top 40 chart runs in America. And by the way, pertinent to our discussion here, the 64 chart run of Twist and Shout was on the little Tolly label, but the 86 run was on Capital. Anyway, Twist and Shout's Hot 100 debut in March 1964 made it the Beatles seventh simultaneous hit on the chart. All six of the other Beatles singles were on the rise. One week later, there was more turnover on the chart in the number one spot. After seven weeks on top, I Want to hold you'd hand gave way to she Loves yous. Still on the tiny Swan label, the Beatles were the first act to succeed themselves at number one on a Billboard chart since Elvis Presley had done it in 1956 with his back to back smashes Don't Be Cruel and Love Me Tender. And that same week, an eighth Beatles track debuted on the chart. Their cover of Chuck Berry's Rollover Beethoven, featuring guitarist George Harrison on lead vocal. Rollover Beethoven charted as an import. It had been released the prior November on the Capital of Canada label. You heard right, Capitol Records Canadian executives, clearly not as cynical about the Beatles prospects as their American counterparts, had issued the 45 for the Canadian market and now it was selling in US record shops and charting on the Hot 100. This is further evidence of just how frothy Beatlemania got at its height the week Rollover Beethoven debuted, the Beatles held the top three positions on the Hot 100. At number one, she loves you. At number two, the former number one, I want to hold you'd hand. And at number three, please please me. One week later, the Beatles commanded the top four as Twist and Shout rose to number three, bumping please please me back to number four already. This was unprecedented. One act controlling the top three, then the top four. And none of it would have been possible if capital had started issuing Beatles singles a year earlier and controlling when they came out one at a time. All four of these commanding hits were on four different Swan, Capital, Tolly and Vijay, respectively. But the Beatles coup de grace was yet to come. The same week, Twist and Shout gave the Beatles a lock on the top four. A new Beatles single debuted all the way up at number 27. And this one was on Capitol Records, the flagship American label. This finally was the official follow up single to I want to hold you'd hand. It was also the lead off single to a movie which the Beatles were at that very moment shooting in England for release later that summer. The movie would be called A Hard Day's Night, and its lead single came in with a bang.
- [38:50]
Beatles (singing parts)
Can buy me love. Can buy me love I'll buy you diamond ring, my friend if that makes you feel all right I'll get you anything my friend if you.
- [39:10]
Chris Melanctha
Can'T buy me love was preceded by global retail Pre orders of 2.1 million copies. For the record. That's more sales than even Adele's 2015 blockbuster hello achieved in its opening week. At a time when Billboard's pre computerized methodology made it impossible for songs to debut at number one and difficult to get there in less than a month or two. Can't Buy Me Love did the improbable. It shot to number one in its second week, leaping from number 27 all the way to the top. A new chart record by bumping she Loves yous from the penthouse, Can't Buy Me Love also set another record for turnover at no.1. This was now the Beatles third straight no.1 single with no other artists interrupting them. But most impressive of all, for the week ending April 4, 1964, can't buy me Love crowned the first and only single artist sweep of the top five in history. It pushed the other four Beatles singles out of the way, and new Beatles singles were still debuting on the lower rungs of the chart. That same week, seven other Beatles songs were below the top five, including such recent debuts as the George fronted Do youo Want to Know a Secret, the Paul led All My Loving, and the Jon penned you can't do that. That's a dozen Beatles singles spread across the Hot 100. One week later, while the Beatles still held down five of the chart's top 10, two more of their songs, There's a Place and Love Me do, appeared on the chart, making a new total of 14. Love me do, their first ever single, finally made its American debut more than 18 months after it was first recorded, this time in the better known version, with Ring Star on tambourine and session drummer Andy White manning the kit.
- [41:08]
Beatles (singing parts)
Love, love me do you know I love you I'll always be true so please love me do.
- [41:26]
Chris Melanctha
Only four of these 14 charting Beatles hits were on the American Capital label. The other 10 were on imprints ranging from Tali to Vijay to Swan to Capital of Canada. With those 13th and 14th debuts the week ending April 11, 1964, the Beatles set a new mark for most songs by a single act on the Hot 100, a record they would hold for more than 40 years. That begs the how many of these records do the Beatles still hold all these decades later? In his classic reference book the billboard book of no. 1 hits, chart historian Fred Bronson devotes the page on Can't Buy Me Love to running down all of the chart records that song set. Biggest Leap to number one Most consecutive number ones Greatest monopoly of the Hot 100 however, since Bronson last updated his book in the mid-2000s, a couple of these records have been shattered. For example, the biggest leap to no. 1, when Can't Buy Me Love shot from no. 27 to the top, has been beaten several times. American Idol season one winner Kelly Clarkson actually beat the record twice, first with her debut single A Moment like this, which flew from no. 52 to no. 1 in 2002, and later in 2009, when her single My Life Would Suck without yout leapt from number 97 all the way to the top. The record of 14 simultaneous Hot 100 hits has also been shattered multiple times in the 21st century. What made the record possible for The Beatles in 1964 was the fluke of so many labels flooding the market with Beatles 45s. At the same time, in the 2000s, a new technological quirk. The invention of streaming music has made it possible for artists from Drake to Ed Sheeran to the Weeknd to chart virtually every song on a new album in a single week. Just this year, in March, Drake beat his own record when he charted 24 tracks on the Hot 100 at the same time. What about the record for turnover at number one? The Beatles succeeding themselves in the top slot with three consecutive number one singles. They still hold that record, but they almost lost it a dozen years ago when Usher scored three back to back to back chart toppers with his 2004 hits yeah, Burn and Confessions. If his run hadn't been interrupted for just one week by the debut single from that year's American Idol winner Fantasia, he'd have tied the Beatles record. And the most mind blowing chart record of all the Beatles hammerlock. Of the entire top five, will anybody ever equal or even top that feat? In the Billboard book of number one hits, Bronson writes, quote, no one had ever done anything even close to this before and it is doubtful the conditions will ever exist for anyone to do it again. That's probably right, although there have been a couple of close calls. Not long after Usher set his near record for one week in 2005, rapper 50 Cent held three of the chart's top five positions in one week, although Fitty was the lead artist on only two of them. More recently, in early 2016, Justin Bieber pulled off the even more impressive feat of leading three Top five hits at the same time. And if you have been alive in America anytime in the last year, I'm sure you've heard all of them. The Smashes what do you mean, Sorry and Love Yourself. Now that streaming music from services like Spotify and Apple Music dominates the Hot 100, it is easy to imagine modern superstars beating the Beatles. Whenever a new blockbuster album from a star act drops, virtually every album cut appears on the charts somewhere, both in England and in America. Just this year, in March 2017, pop star Ed Sheeran made headlines in the UK when, thanks to streaming, every track from his new album, Divide put a stranglehold on the British charts. For one week, 16 out of the top 20 singles in the UK were Sheeran songs. If you are a Beatles fan and a chart geek like me, however, there's good news. Unlike the British chart, which is based entirely on digital streams and sales, America's Hot 100 is still a hybrid chart combining sales, streams and airplay. Radio tends to play no more than one or two current hits by an artist at the same time. That means that while it is possible for a couple of dozen Drake or Bieber or Sheeran tracks to appear on the Hot 100 somewhere, most of these tracks are won't land very high or chart very long. The week Drake set his recent record, only one of those 24 tracks was in the top 10. Holding down the entire top five is very hard. Fred Bronson might well turn out to be right. As long as some form of radio, whether terrestrial or Pandora, is baked into the Hot 100, the circumstances may never exist again for one artist to dominate the entire top five. After all, the Beatles have held that top five record for 53 years now. From 1962 to 1964, they fought hard to break in America, the birthplace of rock and roll, the world's biggest music market, the promised land. Five decades later, at the ages of 74 and 76, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still touring that promised land, still playing those hits from 1964. And maybe some records are just not meant to be broken. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Chris Barubin, the executive the executive producer of Slate Podcasts is Steve Lipta. Check out more of their podcasts at Panoply fm. One of my favorites and the inspiration for Hit Parade is John Dickerson's Whistle Stop, which tells great stories of US presidencies from decades past. We also welcome your feedback. Send us an email@hitparadelate.com thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hip Parade parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanctha.