Which Beatles songs went to number one without a chorus?
The typical recipe for success is a song that goes something like this: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge and one big finale chorus once more. However, The Beatles’ talent went so far beyond any tried and tested structure that they could hit number one without it.
In particular, that golden recipe typically requires a chorus that is endlessly catchy. The history of number ones is mostly a history of earworms – of songs that you hear once and then find caught in your head for days on end, all thanks to the power of a chorus.
The Beatles wrote some amazing ones, don’t get me wrong. In fact, a good chorus was really what they did best, especially at the start of their career. Their earlier records, which followed that structure a lot more strictly, were packed with exactly the kind of songs that first proved that structure’s power. They’re the foundation for rock and roll success, as a chorus line like “she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah”, or “It’s been a hard day’s night, / And I’ve been working like a dog” are undeniable – they’re foolproof and feel like they were always bound to be hits.
They’re primed and ready for mass crowds to sing along to, and as Paul McCartney still tours so many of the band’s songs around the world, those big choruses are still sung and passed down generation to generation.
However, the power of the band was in their innovation. Especially as the years went on, there’s an almost direct correlation between the length of time they’d been a band and the looseness of their song structures. As things for trippier, weirder and less dependent on pleasing crowds in live performances, they freed themselves up to abandon any rigid idea of what a song should be.
On many occasions, they abandoned the one thing that any record label or music expert would surely see as the ultimate must-have for a hit – a chorus.
There are plenty of songs in their discography without one – ‘A Day In The Life’, the entirety of the Abbey Road medley basically has no chorus, all of their weirder tracks like ‘Revolution 9’ obviously don’t.
In some cases, it’s hard to pin down what a chorus is or isn’t. A lot of their songs have a central line that seems to act as a chorus, returning to the same idea or theme at the end of each verse in place of a solid, block section. Take for example ‘In My Life’, there’s no chorus, but the return to the slightly altering phrase “in my life, I love you more”, basically acts as one.
It makes the question a little blurry, but the fact is clear – The Beatles needed no formula to top the charts.
Which Beatles songs went to number one without a chorus?
The problem here is the matter of what qualifies as a chorus and what doesn’t.
‘Paperback Writer’, the band’s 1966 number one, has no explicit written chorus, but the refrain of the titular lyric stands in for one. It’s a similar story for ‘Eleanor Rigby’ where the echoing calls of “All the lonely people, Where do they all come from?” don’t feel like a traditional chorus in the way the band used to write them, but in the August 1966 number one, it definitely acts as one.
The only clear number one The Beatles ever got without a clear chorus is ‘Hey Jude’, coming in March 1968. It’s easy to forget that the track doesn’t have a central, grounding chorus because that finale of the “na na nas” basically serves the same purpose, giving the crowd a big sing-along moment.
But as for the song itself, before that, there is no chorus beyond the phrase “hey Jude” that comes at the start of every verse. Providing enough repetition to hook listeners in and still have that earworm effect, it’s a perfect example of Paul McCartney understanding how to get the job done, without doing it in the typical old way.
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