3 Beatles Deep Cuts From ‘Please Please Me’ That Every Fan Should Know

What would an artist be without their first record? Although The Beatles would go on to have plenty of No. 1 albums throughout their career, it was Please Please Me that got them started and catapulted them into the spotlight forever. Here are three favorite tracks from the album that The Beatles put together while they were still figuring out what it even was to be “a Beatle.”

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“There’s A Place”

“There’s A Place” is one of The Beatles’ more sing-alongy songs, in my opinion. The song actually draws inspiration from “Somewhere” in the musical West Side Story, where Tony meets Maria at her window after the Rumble, during which he kills her brother, Bernardo.

“Someday” sings, “Someday, somehow / We’ll find a new way of living / We’ll find there’s a way of forgiving / Somewhere / There’s a place for us / A time and a place for us /Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.”

“In our case, the place was in the mind, rather than round the back of the stairs for a kiss and a cuddle,” McCartney explains of “There’s A Place” in Many Years From Now.

“Baby It’s You”

“Baby It’s You” has this doo-wop groove that makes you feel like you’re listening to something straight from the jukebox. That’s probably because, before The Beatles did their own spin on it, “Baby It’s You” was first recorded by The Shirelles, a popular 60s girl group. The Beatles were big fans of that type of music, and so when they were finishing up Please Please Me, they chose to finish it off with a couple of covers. “Baby It’s You” made the cut.

“I Saw Her Standing There”

The importance of this song is impossible to ignore, especially because it’s one of the earlier songs that Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote as a duo.

Even in his book The Lyrics, McCartney acknowledged that the song was one of his personal favorites.  “If I had to choose what I thought was my best work over the years, I would probably include ‘I Saw Her Standing There’… No, I would definitely include this one,” he shared.

Photo by: Daily Herald Archive/National Science & Media Museum/SSPL via Getty Images