With regard to the song's inspiration, it's easy to hear the 'black, girl-group' sound emanating throughout the track. Since there is no record of The Beatles ever performing the song on stage, nor for radio or television, they obviously had no other aspirations for the song Saying that he 'just knocked it off' referred to how Lennon and McCartney would create filler songs ('work songs' or 'hack songs' as they would refer to them) that were just meant to fill a need, in this case, a slot in the movie. It was given to fellow Liverpool group 'The Strangers' to record.ĭuring their first American visit in February, they must have been informed by someone that they needed to come up with more 'upbeat' songs, so that's where the remaining songs used in the movie were written, namely ' I Should Have Known Better,' ' I'm Happy Just To Dance With You' and 'Tell Me Why.' The title track didn't come until April when it was decided what the film would be named, so the song ' A Hard Day's Night' would be the exception here.

During this January stay, the first batch of songs were written, including ' Can't Buy Me Love,' ' You Can't Do That,' ' If I Fell,' ' And I Love Her' and ' I'll Be Back.' Also written during this stay was a song entitled 'One And One Is Two,' which was considered not good enough for use in the movie. Knowing that they had to start writing songs for their upcoming movie, they had a piano brought in to the George V Hotel in Paris where they were playing an extensive 18-day residency at the Olympia Theatre. It was like a black, girl-group New York song.' This statement from John Lennon in 1980 isn't much to go on, but it does narrow down events to specify February 1964 as the time of writing. ''Tell Me Why'.They needed another upbeat song and I just knocked it off.

Lyrics beatles tell me why