4 Beatles Songs That Sound So Happy, You Forget What They’re Actually About

Don’t be deceived by these happy-sounding tunes. These 4 songs are actually some of the darker ones in The Beatles‘ catalog, despite their shiny exterior.

Videos by American Songwriter

“Help!”

This song is definitely a jam, but if you listen closely, it’s actually a song about wishing you were as “self-assured” as you were in your younger days. Even Lennon, who wrote the track for the 1965 movie Help! later admitted that it was a song about his own insecurities.

“When ‘Help!’ came out, I was actually crying out for help,” Lennon told David Sheff. “Most people think it’s just a fast rock ‘n’ roll song. I didn’t realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. So it was my fat Elvis period.”

“Getting Better”

You might be thinking, hey, at least this title sounds optimistic. But no. “Getting Better” is actually pretty dark. The song deals with themes of anger and even domestic violence, as Lennon and McCarthy touch on in the third verse.

“I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved.”

“All that ‘I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved’ was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically – any woman.” Lennon told David Sheff, “I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women.”

“I’m A Loser”

This song is pretty upbeat for the most part, but you don’t have to listen too long to realize, yet again, it stems from insecurity. Written by Lennon, of course, this one is a little more of a heartbreak anthem, singing about “losing someone” you used to love.

As Paul McCartney later shared with Miles Barry, Lennon writing a song like “I’m A Loser” for The Beatles was actually pretty bold.

“Looking back on it, I think songs like ‘I’m A Loser’ and ‘Nowhere Man’ were John’s cries for help,” he shared. “We used to listen to quite a lot of country and western songs and they are all about sadness and ‘I lost my truck’ so it was quite acceptable to sing ‘I’m a loser’. You didn’t really think about it at the time, it’s only later you think, God! I think it was pretty brave of John.”

“Baby’s In Black”

While “Baby’s In Black” by The Beatles is a fun waltzy tune, its subject matter is a little depressing. This McCartney-Lennon collaboration sings about a girl who’s dressed in black for her lover, who is nowhere to be found. However, as the song reveals, she does have another secret admirer.

As McCartney revealed, “The story is about a girl who’s wearing black because the bloke she loves has gone away forever. The feller singing the song fancies her, too, but he’s getting nowhere. We wrote it originally in a waltz style, but it finished as a mixture of waltz and beat.”

Photo by: Keystone/Getty Images