“All You Need is Love” by The Beatles

"All You Need Is Love" came out as a stand-alone Beatles single in July 1967, backed with "Baby, You're a Rich Man", written by John Lennon for Britain's slot on Our World, the first live global television hookup. On June 25 the band performed it at EMI Studios in London for more than 400 million viewers in 25 countries, playing over a prerecorded backing track to a studio full of guests in psychedelic finery; Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Pattie Boyd and Jane Asher all turn up on the chorus.

Lennon kept the words plain so the whole planet could sing them, and George Martin's arrangement bookends them with a burst of "La Marseillaise" and a closing jumble of "In the Mood", "Greensleeves", Bach and "She Loves You". It topped the charts in Britain and America and became an anthem for flower power, though plenty of critics later found its message naive.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.