The 10 best-selling singles by The Beatles
Where would music be without The Beatles? It’s hard to say, although Danny Boyle took a questionable crack at it with his 2019 film Yesterday. The influence that the Fab Four have exerted over the past six decades is insurmountable, and they have since been recognised as the best-selling band of all time. As key players in the British Invasion, The Beatles were one of the first boybands, causing a frenzy everywhere they went.
They transformed the landscape of modern music, rapidly developing their sound over the course of the 1960s, becoming one of the first mainstream acts to experiment with Eastern influences and techniques such as double-tracking and tape manipulation. Beginning as a skiffle and rock and roll act, frequently covering tracks by the likes of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, The Beatles evolved quickly, working with genres from psychedelic rock to folk. They (arguably) made early dents into the development of heavy metal with ‘Helter Skelter’ and released one of the earliest examples of a concept album with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.
The Liverpool foursome had more success in the charts than anyone else, scoring countless number ones, proving their insane popularity. They secured 20 number-ones on the Billboard Hot 100, maintaining their acclaim across the whole decade. At home, they scored 17 number ones, their first being 1963’s ‘From Me To You’, which stayed there for seven weeks. A few months later, they released ‘She Loves You’, quickly becoming one of their signature hits and their highest-selling single in the UK. As of 2022, it has sold over 1.93 million copies.
According to Paul McCartney (via Anthology), “We were in a van up in Newcastle. I’d planned an ‘answering song’ where a couple of us would sing ‘She loves you…’ and the other one answers, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ We decided that that was a crummy idea as it was, but at least we then had the idea for a song called ‘She Loves You’. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it.”
Most of The Beatles’ highest-selling singles (via The Official Charts) are earlier cuts from their career, such as ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. However, later tracks such as the non-album single ‘Hello Goodbye’ and ‘Get Back’ also make the list, proving that the band were still commercially successful as their career came to an end. One of the band’s most well-known songs, ‘Hey Jude’, released in 1968, is number six on the list, having sold 1,141,635 copies in the UK and 8 million worldwide.
Closely missing out on the top ten is ‘All You Need Is Love’ at number 11, ‘Paperback Writer’ at number 13, and, surprisingly, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ at 26 and 27, respectively. Find the full top 10 below.
Top 10 best-selling singles by The Beatles:
- ‘She Loves You’
- ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’
- ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’
- ‘I Feel Fine’
- ‘Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out’
- ‘Hey Jude’
- ‘Help!’
- ‘From Me To You’
- ‘Hello Goodbye’
- ‘Get Back’
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