#16: From Me To You

Written by: Paul McCartney & John Lennon
Released: April 12th, 1963
Appears on: Past Masters, Vol. 1
Lead vocal: John & Paul

Paul has talked about this numerous times, so what I am saying here sort of paraphrases what he has said about a lot of the early songs by the Beatles.
If you listen closely to most of these songs, you'll notice that there is always a pronoun directing the song immediately to the listener. This is the best and most unique thing about these songs. "From Me To You"...."P.S. I Love You"..."Thank You Girl"....I could go on. What this does is it allows the listener to become a part of the song, especially since you are directly addressed in the title.

"From Me To You" is the ultimate mission statement. The Beatles are automatically telling you that this song, and practically everything they will release from this point on, is for you, the listeners. In fact, as The Beatles Live At The BBC! shows us, it was actually "From Us To You". This is probably the reason why the song became their first unquestioned number one record. It becomes obvious that the Beatles are not doing this for themselves, but for their fans...and as soon as they see that making music is not just about filling your pockets for you, you've won them over. Fans could hear (and see) that these four men were making the music for them to enjoy.

The song is easily the best of the first three singles and was never released on an LP in Britain until 1966's A Collection of Beatles Oldies (But Goldies!). The reason why this single, like so many other early ones, was not put on an album was that George Martin and The Beatles didn't want to force record buyers to buy the same song twice. They broke this 'rule' right away with Please Please Me, but they were probably pushed by EMI to do that, since it was their first album. The rule was broken again for A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Revolver, Let It Be and Abbey Road. Still, it is fascinating to see that all of the Beatles' albums are so great, but most of them don't even have a single on it.