Every Little Thing
Album: Beatles for Sale
Written by: Paul
Slapped together from old Cavern Club covers, rehashed early Lennon-McCartney collaborations, and a handful of tunes written in the midst of Beatlemania’s greatest heights, 1964’s Beatles for Sale as an entire album goes a bit underappreciated. Not so much for its sparkling quality, it is indeed a collection of relative misfits, but for the fact that it still manages to be a wonderful listen in spite of the context in which it was created.
The band had been besieged by interviews, TV spots, and tour dates spanning the globe at the time of the album’s recording, leaving little time to write any new material at all. Still, they found fourteen mostly-quality tracks and crammed the recording sessions for Beatles for Sale in between British and U.S. tours around August of 1964, about two months after the release of A Hard Day’s Night. It was their fourth album in less than two years. It spent 11 weeks at number one and 46 weeks in the top 20.
Bands today with equipment eons ahead of what was at the Beatles’ disposal take years to create one album. John, Paul, George, and Ringo threw this puppy together on their day off and it went platinum.
“Every Little Thing” is one of the finer tracks on Beatles for Sale. More upbeat than most of the gloomy and introspective originals on the record, the tune is somewhat unusual for the fact that it was penned by Paul and sung by John, something that was not all that common for the duo. It carries a bright and catchy chorus with some nice 12-string guitar work from John. The solo is heartfelt and I love the booming drum between chorus vocals.
I won’t say “Every Little Thing” is a towering triumph in Beatles songwriting or anything like that. It’s just a great little track that’s representative of one of the more slept on albums in the Fab Four’s catalog. Any great tune on an underrated album is underrated, too.
