![]() Then, in the final month of 1963, came the sudden and profound success of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in the United States. It was, of course, not helpful that executives at Capitol Records, their distributor’s American subsidiary, passed on issuing anything by the Beatles until “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” As a result, smaller labels with lesser promotional capacity claimed the commercial rights to their earlier recordings. Due to the size of the crowds, they had to be smuggled into the venue with assistance from police. The Beatles outside the Birmingham Hippodrome, November 1963. Their three previous singles released in the United States sold unimpressively and were given little airplay despite each having first registered as number-one hits for the band on the British charts. Across the Atlantic, however, the Beatles had yet to make a noteworthy impression. ![]() ![]() “Beatlemania” was already underway in the United Kingdom. Still to come were the increasingly more abstract and innovative compositions, the abrupt withdrawal from touring, the aesthetic reverberations of exposure to psychedelic substances, and their pioneering approach to the studio album as an integral work of recording art.īut the arrival of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” marked a breakthrough from which all the rest necessarily followed. It all seems so quaint now: Lennon and McCartney harmonizing the sweet-as-pie vocal part to that upbeat tune, the uniform mop tops and the matching suits, the way girls in every crowd relentlessly screamed at the sight of them. ![]() The Beatles, upon their arrival at Kennedy International Airport in New York City on February 7, 1964. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles was released in the United States on December 26, 1963, and in short order became that group’s first number-one single in the U.S. ![]()
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