The 10 best bridges by The Beatles
Throughout their earliest years, The Beatles were picking up tricks and tips to improve their songwriting. One of their earliest realisations was in structure: songs had to have distinctive sections. A verse and a chorus were all well and good, but in order to have real punch, bridges were required.
To The Beatles, these sections were referred to as a “middle eight”. The numerical title was in reference to an extra eight bars that were distinct from verse and chorus sections in traditional song forms. The sections didn’t have to be eight bars long explicitly, but in early songs like ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’, they often were.
Surprisingly enough, middle eights and bridges were song elements that The Beatles actually perfected in the first half of their career rather than building upon them in the later 1960s. With one major exception, the best Beatles middle eights cropped up when the band members were still inexperienced songwriters, sticking more tightly to established composition structures. Practically every early Beatles track has a middle eight in it, and almost all of them help to push the song along in fascinating ways.
Here are ten of the best bridges in The Beatles’ catalogue.
The 10 best Beatles bridges:
10. ‘Wait’
Even The Beatles’ discarded material had flashes of brilliance. ‘Wait’ was originally recorded for the 1965 album Help!, but it went unused. A few months later, the band were just a minute or two short of a full-length LP while recording Rubber Soul. With an impending deadline just around the corner, ‘Wait’ was dusted off for inclusion.
With a bridge section helmed by Paul McCartney, ‘Wait’ weirdly doesn’t feel tied to either the goofy fun of Help! or the folkie drive of Rubber Soul. As often happened with their middle eights, the lead singers were switched, and a new dynamic was hit upon. It’s not exactly brilliant, but ‘Wait’ does become a much better song with its brief bridge.
9. ‘Long, Long, Long’
George Harrison and the rest of The Beatles had already evolved past the standard song form. Traditional middle eights were now being morphed, chopped up, and completely discarded. With shifting keys, time signatures, and sections, it’s hard to tell whether ‘Long, Long, Long’ even qualifies as having traditional bridge sections.
But then again, how could you name the “So many tears I’ve been searching / So many tears I’ve been wasting” section of ‘Long, Long, Long’ as anything else? Between its delicate verses and intense choruses, ‘Long, Long, Long’ begs for a section that can tie the fluctuating dynamics of the song together. When Harrison and McCartney team up for their pleasing shouts in harmony, it elevates the meditative track into something mythical.
8. ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is a classic case of lines getting blurred when talking about musical composition. Some would argue that Paul McCartney’s vocal section is actually more of a chorus compared to John Lennon’s verses. However, Lennon referred to McCartney’s section as a bridge in his 1980 Playboy interview, so we’ll take that as gospel here.
Every part of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is expertly crafted, from its ringing opening chord to Lennon’s frenetic and energetic verses. McCartney then comes in hot, bringing the action back home and signalling his love with one of his signature throat-shredding shouts. Seriously, you try and hit that same note at the end of the middle eight.
7. ‘If I Fell’
Just two songs after ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, The Beatles had already started to dismantle the traditional song structure. ‘If I Fell’ features a descending chromatic introduction sung by Lennon that never gets repeated throughout the entire track. But just because they’re breaking the rules doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for a middle eight.
Here, the bridge section serves to add tension. Instead of completing the verse phrase, the middle eight hangs on the 7th chord to provide some brief but necessary counterpoint to the track. With a simple major to minor chord change, The Beatles added some subtle but genius push and pull into one of Lennon’s best love songs.
6. ‘This Boy’
As lovers of doo-wop and Motown, The Beatles strived to have a classic ballad all their own. Lennon didn’t seem to think that ‘This Boy’ held up, but we beg to differ. Expertly constructed, ‘This Boy’ lives up to its Smokey Robinson inspiration and then some.
After harmonising perfectly throughout the verses of ‘This Boy’, John Lennon steps up to the mic for a solo bridge section that hangs on his pleading cries. Pushing his voice to its breaking point, Lennon sweats and strains his way through a revelatory section that elevates ‘This Boy’ to a true classic. About the song, Lennon said: “There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n’ roll. But of course, when I think of some of my own songs – ‘In My Life’, or some of the early stuff, ‘This Boy’ – I was writing melody with the best of them.”
5. ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’
Traditional song structures weren’t the emphasis of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Songs like ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ discarded tradition for more experimental approaches to pop. But when it came time for Ringo Starr to step up to the mic, simplicity was necessary.
Once again pulling out their favourite technique of switching up singers for their bridge sections, the other three Beatles support Starr with some stirring backup vocals, singing, “Do you need anybody?” ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ is a song about friends by four friends, with an uplifting bridge to boot.
4. ‘Dear Prudence‘
Conjuring up beautiful images was something that The Beatles could just do naturally. In ‘Dear Prudence’, Lennon pleads for a shut-in to come out and experience the wonders of the real world. In order to drive that point home, a bridge section needed to show the clouds parting and the sky opening up.
With a fuzzy electric guitar and a chanting chorus of backing singers pleading for the titular character to “look around”, the middle eight of ‘Dear Prudence’ is classic Beatles songwriting in a late-period piece. It’s less than 30 seconds long, but ‘Dear Prudence’ wouldn’t nearly be as amazing without its illuminating bridge.
3. ‘No Reply‘
The Beatles were exhausted by the time they recorded 1964’s Beatles for Sale. After two years of relentless touring and recording, the band were huge stars at the expense of their peace of mind. With the languid tones of ‘No Reply’, Beatles for Sale opens with what sounds like an audible sigh from John Lennon.
That is until Lennon hits the bridge section. After spending the chorus sections screaming his throat raw, Lennon adds a genuine revelation into the middle eight. Directly addressing his unappreciative partner, Lennon crafts an embittered bridge to land the song’s title phrase in a brand new context. That’s what the best bridges do: redefine a song and add something completely different to it.
2. ‘We Can Work It Out’
‘We Can Work It Out’ is the prototypical Beatles bridge section. After McCartney’s optimistic verses, Lennon comes barrelling in with a pessimistic view of how short life is and how little time there is to be wasted fussing and fighting. In later years, it would be used by both Lennon and McCartney to underscore their songwriting differences.
The most important part about the bridge section to ‘We Can Work It Out’ isn’t how different it is from the verses but how perfectly it works in the song’s overall composition. As illustrative and it is insightful, Lennon’s bridge to ‘We Can Work It Out’ has officially become iconic within The Beatles’ canon of classic songs.
1. ‘Something‘
Although ‘We Can Work It Out’ is probably the most famous Beatles bridge, it’s not the best. That distinction goes to George Harrison’s masterclass in songwriting, ‘Something’. While his bandmates were hitting all-time lows in terms of working relationships, Harrison’s one-man song factory crafted an all-time classic.
After the woozy and romantic main sections, ‘Something’ drops into a high-velocity and euphoric bridge that features driving drums, thumping piano, and wild descending melody lines. Harrison and McCartney both go big with their final “I don’t know” lines, and the results are nothing short of transcendent.
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