The Beatles learned on the job throughout their careers. Due to the wealth of success they achieved in such a small amount of time, they didn’t have the luxury of time and were under pressure to create at a prolific pace. Therefore, not every song that left the hit factory was crammed with meaning.
The Fab Four were fully formed as a live band thanks to their time performing in Hamburg. During their residencies, they often performed six times a day, which meant they blew all of their competition out of the water when they returned to Liverpool. Similarly, their songwriting only improved through practice.
While the work they produced at the beginning of their career is charmingly innocent, their songs weren’t intended to start a revolution. Nevertheless, they injected hope and optimism into the souls of millions who fell head over heels with Beatlemania. They earned a reputation for their harmonies, all underpinned by searing pop sensibilities, and lyrics were merely playing second fiddle on tracks like ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.
Once they retired from touring in 1966, The Beatles had the luxury of focusing on spending time in the studio, where they levelled up their songwriting even further. Yet, two years before, the Fab Four were in a rush, which led to them employing shortcuts. John Lennon was brazenly open about 1964’s, ‘I Should Have Known Better’ being devoid of meaning. The song featured on A Hard Day’s Night and was also the B-side for the album’s title track. Initially, Lennon was full of praise for the composition but later backtracked in no uncertain terms.
When the film was released, Lennon revealed it was one of his favourites on the soundtrack, stating: “There are four I really go for: ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘If I Fell’, ‘I Should Have Known Better’ – a song with harmonica we feature during the opening train sequence – and ‘Tell Me Why’.” However, in 1980 when Lennon sat down for a candid conversation with Playboy’s David Sheff, he brutally said: “Just a song; it doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
Lennon had grown significantly as an artist in the years between his two comments on ‘I Should Have Known Better’, which led him to disown many of his old creations. At this stage of his career, he was his harshest critic and condemned a substantial portion of the Fab Four’s back catalogue.
Elsewhere in the interview, Lennon also said of ‘I’ll Get You’, “That was Paul and me trying to write a song… and it didn’t work out.” Despite the universally adored status of ‘Yesterday‘, he still found a way to pick holes in it, stating, “The lyrics don’t resolve into any sense, they’re good lines. They certainly work, you know what I mean? They’re good— but if you read the whole song, it doesn’t say anything; you don’t know what happened. She left and he wishes it were yesterday, that much you get, but it doesn’t really resolve.”
The former Beatle no longer recognise the person who had written those songs all those years prior, which is why he couldn’t relate to ‘I Should Have Known Better’. He was now a 40-year-old, who had been through the wringer of life, suffering everything from divorce and addiction issues, which made him weary. Admittedly, ‘I Should Have Known Better’ may not have a profound message attached, but it’s a beautiful pop song with a delightful hook that only The Beatles could have recorded.
