“Help!” by The Beatles

"Help!" gave the Beatles' 1965 film its name and its theme, headed up the soundtrack album as well, and tears out of the gate at a gallop. The credit reads Lennon-McCartney, but it was mostly John Lennon's song, with Paul McCartney pitching in.

Listen past the jangle and the chirpy harmonies, though, and there's a man in trouble. Years later, in a 1980 interview with Playboy, Lennon said the whole Beatles phenomenon had grown too big to make sense of, and that the song was him calling out for rescue without quite realizing it. The band plays it bright and fast, as if speed alone could outrun the panic, and that tension between the cheery surface and the plea underneath is what gives it its bite.

It went to number one in both Britain and America and stayed there for three weeks. Rolling Stone placed it 29th among the 500 greatest songs ever in both 2004 and 2010, and in 2008 the Grammy Hall of Fame took in the 1965 Capitol recording.

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