“Can't Buy Me Love” by The Beatles

Paul McCartney wrote "Can't Buy Me Love" in a suite at the George V in Paris, where the Beatles had an upright piano hauled in so the songs could keep coming, and he wrote it with the heat on: "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had just gone to number one in America. It went out in March 1964 as the group's sixth single, credited as ever to Lennon–McCartney, then turned up on A Hard Day's Night and in a scene from Richard Lester's film.

George Martin, producing, felt it needed framing, something to open on and something to close it out, and the finished record hits the ground at a sprint: breathless, bluesy and cocky, with the title doing the preaching. It topped the charts in Britain, America and a string of other countries from Australia to Sweden, and only three UK singles outsold it all decade.

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