What makes ‘We Can Work It Out’ the definitive Beatles song?
Given the number of hits the band had, it’s hard to pinpoint precisely what deserves to be regarded as the ‘definitive’ song by The Beatles. Even outside of all of the band’s singles, their album tracks are often regarded as equally important to their catalogue, and some of the deep cuts mean just as much to fans and casual listeners as some of the most renowned moments in their history. With over 200 songs to pick from, narrowing it down to just one that so succinctly sums up the band in a nutshell might feel like an impossible task.
With all of their experimentation at the later end of their career, it might be reasonable to think that a track like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, which saw the band incorporate influences from Indian music and psychedelic rock for the first time, might be high up in the pecking order. Something like ‘A Day in the Life’ might also stand a good chance of being nominated as the definitive Beatles song because of how it ties together so many different elements and weaves its way through multiple sections. Why not opt for a track like ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ for how it sounds so unlike any other track the band ever wrote, almost delving into hard rock and heavy metal territory before genre terms for that sound even existed?
The amount of options is incredible, but perhaps the finest example of a song that acts as the epitome of what the Fab Four were all about came much earlier on in their career and wasn’t even featured on one of their studio albums. Coming at the height of their commercial popularity, the 1965 single ‘We Can Work It Out’ is perhaps the best song to nominate as The Beatles’ finest hour – or two minutes in this instance.
While a large portion of the band’s work is attributed to the songwriting partnership of ‘Lennon-McCartney’, it isn’t accurate to say that both John and Paul wrote all of those songs together and divvied out the duties equally. In actual fact, there are very few tracks in their discography that feature songwriting contributions from both members, but ‘We Can Work It Out’ is a rare example of where the two leading members of the group bashed their heads together to write the song – giving the track a fortuitously apt title.
Not only is it rare in this sense, but it was also groundbreaking for how, alongside ‘Day Tripper’, it became one of the first examples of a ‘double A-side’ single release, where both tracks were given equal billing on the 7” single. While there were disputes between the band and the record label over which song should ultimately be given the priority spot on the A-side, the heavier ‘Day Tripper’ and the gentle pop of ‘We Can Work It Out’ eventually shared the honours in an unprecedented move by the band, making them the first act in history to officially release a single in this format.
The song also marked another first for the group, given that they recorded a promotional video for the song to be broadcast on television. Its release came at a time when their schedules were becoming increasingly overloaded due to their meteoric rise in popularity, and in lieu of reserving additional time to make more live television appearances, the video of the band performing the song ‘live’ would instead be broadcast in the slot that would usually have been reserved for a studio performance.
It might be one of the simplest tracks that the band ever had success with, but sometimes simplicity worked in their favour, with The Beatles’ most accessible songs often having the most staying power in the charts. While it didn’t enter the UK charts at number one, it assumed the top spot in its second week and remained there for a further five weeks, making it the joint third-longest stint that the band achieved at the top of the chart. The Beatles weren’t the only band to have major success with the song either, with Stevie Wonder’s 1971 cover of the track earning him a Grammy Award several years after the original hit.
It might not be the most adventurous Beatles song ever, but what it does offer is a quintessential Beatles-esque feeling, and truly epitomises just how easily they could pen a chart-topping track in the earlier years of the band. Under all of the external pressures and constraints of having to continue to strike gold due to popular demand, they struck gold with ‘We Can Work It Out’, and for that reason, it ought to be lauded as the most defining moment of their career.
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