3 Popular Songs That Were Surprisingly Influenced by The Beatles

The Beatles are widely regarded as one of the greatest musical groups of all time, so it’s no wonder their music inspired countless generations. Here are a few songs from over the years that a specific Beatles song has admittedly inspired.

“Give A Little Bit” by Supertramp

Roger Hodgson of Supertramp wrote this song, which took “All You Need Is Love” as inspiration.

“I think it’s [‘Give A Little Bit’] a great song. I didn’t realize it was when I first wrote it,” he explained to Songfacts. “It actually took me six years before I even brought it to the band. But I wrote it I think around 1970. That time, the late ’60s, early ’70s, was a very idealistic time, one of hope, a lot of peace and love and the dream of the ’60s was still very alive and maturing, if you like. The Beatles had put out ‘All You Need Is Love’ a year prior to that. I believed in love—it was always for love—and just felt that was the most important thing in life.”

“Girl Don’t Tell Me” by The Beach Boys

During Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s honeymoon with his then-wife, Marilyn, he shared in his memoir that “a whole song came to me. It was ‘Girl Don’t Tell Me’. I didn’t have any way to get it down. But I just heard the whole thing up there, from start to finish, and I remembered it well enough to go later and write down the lyrics on a piece of paper.”

The Beatles heavily influenced Wilson’s songwriting during this period. “Ticket To Ride” heavily influenced “Girl Don’t Tell Me”, especially vocally.

“Setting Sun” by The Chemical Brothers

“Setting Sun” features vocals from Noel Gallagher of Oasis, who decided he wanted to work on something with The Chemical Brothers after hearing their song “Life Is Sweet”. The duo already had a song based on The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”, so that’s what they sent Gallagher. The original title was “Tomorrow Never Noels”.

Ed Simons of The Chemical Brothers shared with 1000 UK No. 1 Hits that: “He (Gallagher) got wind that we wanted to do a track with him. He phoned us up and said, ‘I’ll come down now and do it.’ I told him I would send him a tape of the track that we thought might appeal to him as it had a Beatlesque feel to it. The whole track took us a day in the studio with him, then us mixing for a while, and it was in the can.”

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