10 classic Beatles songs that are hiding mistakes
There’s a prevalent notion that detractors like to point out about The Beatles: they were too perfect. Whether it was their intricate vocal harmonies or their exacting precision when it came to overdubbing, or even their tireless experimental tendencies around production, The Beatles pushed popular music to its absolute furthest possible point in pursuit of perfection. At least, that’s how the narrative goes.
In fact, that was the initial appeal of their longtime friendly rivals, The Rolling Stones. You could bring a Beatle home to mom and dad, but the rough and ready Rolling Stones? Never. The Stones’ bluesy edge, perfectly illustrated by the ragged harmonies between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, was in direct opposition to the angelic three-part harmonies that popped up throughout The Beatles’ catalogue. If you wanted something a little less polished, then the Stones were the band for you.
But this is an oversimplification of the truth. The Beatles had plenty of bluesy tracks – ‘Yer Blues’ and ‘For You Blue’ even giving their names to the form – and their tracks weren’t always perfect. The truth was that, especially in their early years, The Beatles didn’t have time to be perfect. In the days before they could block off entire days at EMI Studios, The Beatles had to record quickly to make it to concerts, promotional appearances, film shoots, and interviews.
Please Please Me was famously recorded in a single 12-hour stretch. It was a rare day when a song wouldn’t be fully recorded and finished in a single session. The Beatles were efficient by design, and thanks to their youthful disposition, it didn’t affect their enthusiasm. That’s why albums like A Hard Day’s Night sound so full of life, even if the members of the group were constantly battling exhaustion.
Since they were working so quickly, nothing could ever truly be perfect. Throughout their decade-long recording career, numerous lyrical flubs, obvious mistakes, wrong notes, and botched chords appear littered throughout The Beatles’ catalogue. Some are more obvious than others, but they exist from the very first Beatles album to the very final one. If you’ve got a sharp ear, maybe you’ve been able to find one or two over the years.
If you haven’t, we’ve pulled together ten of the best examples. Sometimes the mistakes are so subtle that it would be nearly impossible to hear, and other times they’re so egregious that you won’t believe that you’ve never heard them before. Here are ten notable mistakes found in classic Beatles songs.
Ten classic Beatles tracks with mistakes:
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’
The song that broke The Beatles in America is one of the most studied and poured over pop songs in history. It’s not exaggerating to say that even the average person has heard the song a fair number of times, and unless you were going through the arrangement with a fine-tooth comb, ‘I Want to Hold You Hand’ is still as perfect as it sounded in 1964.
But after the first verse and chorus, things start to get a little messy. John Lennon and Paul McCartney sing two different words to lead off the second line of the second verse (about 32 seconds in) and then do the same going into the second chorus (43 seconds in). Lennon almost completely blanks during the third verse, mangling the final, “I want to hold your hand”. The mistakes are blended well, but once you hear them, it’s hard to un-hear them.
‘I Saw Her Standing There’
The very first song on the very first Beatles studio album is pure energy and enthusiasm. It’s not hard to hear how millions of fans fell in love with The Beatles after hearing ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ blasting out of their speakers. But despite putting their best foot forward, The Beatles’ first song has some notable mistakes.
They’re mostly vocal flubs, with Lennon and McCartney constantly flipping each other over the correct vocal lines. The battle between “I wouldn’t dance” and “I’ll never dance” can be heard at the 1:24 mark, with the battle between “Since I saw” and “When I saw” coming in just a few seconds later. There are a few notable edits as well since the final cut of the song is a combination of a few different takes done that day.
‘Hold Me Tight’
The textbook example of shoddy vocal performances in The Beatles catalogue has to go to ‘Hold Me Tight’, the With the Beatles album cut that was put to wax despite some egregious flubs and a clear lack of cohesion between the singers. If you are a big Beatles fan, chances are this is the first song you thought of when “vocal flubs” are mentioned.
This time it’s not just Lennon and McCartney failing to sing the same words (although there’s plenty of that). George Harrison fails to hit his harmony note on the “hold” at the 1:27 mark, leaving a pretty nasty vocal flub on the final cut. Lennon also loses focus around the two-minute mark and hastily comes in late during the “tonight”. All told, this is probably the sloppiest Beatles song out there.
‘Ticket to Ride’
It’s hard to say whether this is a true mistake or perhaps just an artistic choice by Ringo Starr. It seems too subtle to be purposeful, but any drummer or keen rhythmist listening to the track will notice that the drum pattern changes between verses.
For the first half of the song, Starr’s drum beat is deftly syncopated, something he maintains until roughly the 1:25 mark. When he returns, the pattern has shifted slightly to the on-beat. Perhaps Starr was purposefully switching up the beat for the song’s second half, but it seems unlikely.
‘I’m Looking Through You’
By the time The Beatles reached Rubber Soul, they had enough time to hone in on their craft. No more hastily recorded vocals or slippy overdub sessions. The Beatles embraced their recording studio for all it was worth, and this was where their perfection era truly began. Except for ‘I’m Looking Through You’, however, which is one of the messier productions on any Beatles album.
Take your pick on what to focus on: guitar feedback (1:18), off-time hand claps (1:03), strange mixing variations with the organ (1:34), out-of-tune guitar notes (1:53), and even missed drum hits (1:57) abound in this extremely sloppy final take. The Beatles had made recording into an artform by 1965, but ‘I’m Looking Through You’ is almost amateurish.
‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’
Major vocal mistakes were usually changed towards the end of the Beatles’ recording career. They had virtually unlimited time and resources at their disposal, so there was no need for a major mistake to fly under the radar.
However, fixing mistakes could be overruled if the other members liked it.
Such was the case for ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’. In the final verse, McCartney mixes up his central characters, stating that Molly is running the marketplace store while Desmond sings with the band. McCartney wanted to redo his vocal, but the other Beatles liked it, so he was overruled.
‘Long Long Long’
Occasionally, mistakes that were caught on tape wound up adding to the overall arrangement of a song. The Beatles were happy to dabble in experimentalism and randomness, so when something dropped out of the sky, it was usually embraced instead of immediately discarded.
As the final notes of ‘Long Long Long’ come crashing in, a strange rattling sound takes over the song. Although there’s some debate as to whether it was intentional or a mistake (or even an intentional mistake), the rattling gives ‘Long Long Long’ a unique ending unlike any other in the Beatles catalogue.
‘Hey Jude’
‘Hey Jude’ is home to perhaps the most infamous hidden vocal in any Beatles song. Throughout the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy, listeners were going through The Beatles’ catalogue to find potential clues, and a bit of a fluff in the mix of ‘Hey Jude’ raised some eyebrows. Rather than adding to the conspiracy, they simply found a naughty word buried in the final cut.
It’s not exactly certain who uttered the expletive, but around the three-minute mark, it’s possible to hear someone exclaim “Fucking hell!” into the microphone. Most sources point to Lennon uttering the curse, but in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, McCartney recalls that he was the one who cursed after missing a piano chord.
‘Dig a Pony’
‘Dig a Pony’ actually starts with a mistake: a count-in is initiated, but Starr stops the song before it even begins because he didn’t have both drumsticks at the ready. Not the smoothest way to start a song, and if it wasn’t for the intervention of Phil Spector, the false start probably would have ended up on the cutting room floor.
When the song finally comes in proper, it’s mostly a solid affair. But around the 2:10 mark, McCartney fails to hit his high harmony note on the “because”. He lets out a loud “whoo” while Lennon gives a slight sigh before heading into Harrison’s guitar solo. Not the biggest deal, but a mistake nonetheless.
‘The Long and Winding Road’
A classic debate of Beatles lore: did John Lennon purposefully sabotage the bass part in ‘The Long and Winding Road’? For my money, the answer is no. Lennon likely didn’t quite know his way around the six-string bass he was playing or didn’t completely know the song’s chord sequence (or perhaps even riding on a particularly impaired heroin high) when the final take was captured.
Whatever the reason, ‘The Long and Winding Road’ is the Beatles song with the most obviously shoddy instrumental performance. Lennon’s bassline hits so many wrong notes that he only seems to be correct roughly half the time. Why McCartney couldn’t have overdubbed his own bass part is beyond me, but the Get Back sessions were so chaotic that maybe nobody gave a damn at that point.
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