The Beatles Song Both Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan Agree Was the Band’s Best

If there are two icons whose opinions on music we can take as truth, it’s Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Both legendary artists have expressed the same opinion when it comes to The Beatles’ best song. Find out which Fab Four offering Springsteen and Dylan think stands above all the rest below.

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[RELATED: A Look Back at John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr’s First Post-Beatles Collaborations With One Another]

Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan’s Favorite Beatles Song

The Beatles’ music varied greatly from year to year. Though they didn’t last long as a band (at least when compared to their peers), their sound saw many changes. Most listeners would agree that their latter years produced more iconic, sophisticated offerings. However, Springsteen and Dylan kept their focus on the early days of The Fabs when picking their favorite song.

The early years of The Beatles coincided with a cultural shift. English rockers were making their way to America, which had effects in and of itself. Moreover, music was becoming a little less polite. Of course, Elvis Presley and his peers had already broken the seal of sexuality and mass market appeal, but by the time The Beatles hit the big time, sex was a part of everyday culture.

Though “I Want To Hold Your Hand” feels extremely trite and juvenile by today’s standards, Paul McCartney recalls it being an expression of eroticism, which was becoming more and more prevalent.

“There was an eroticism behind it all,” McCartney once said.  “If I’d heard myself use that word when I was seventeen, there would have been a guffaw. But eroticism was very much a driving force behind everything I did.”

Whether people understood the song’s sexual magnetism at the time or not, it became a massive hit for The Beatles. Even the band’s peers took notice of this song’s visceral draw.

“Changed The Course Of My Life”

Younger than The Beatles, Springsteen recalls hearing them for the first time. “When I first saw Elvis, I was nine, but I was a little young, tried to play the guitar, but it didn’t work out, so I put it away,” he once said. “The keeper was in 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ on South Street with my mother driving.”

Springsteen has long professed his love for this song, as he has for the entirety of The Beatles’ career. This early Beatles hit remains a favorite of Springsteen, beating out any of their later, more off-kilter works.

Dylan agrees with Springsteen in that “I Want To Hold Your Hand” was a massive turning point for music. “They were doing things nobody was doing,” Dylan once said. “Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid…I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go.”

Though this song seems relatively simple today, it dropped like a bomb back in the early 60s. Revisit “I Want To Hold Your Hand” above and see if you can put yourself in the shoes of both Springsteen and Dylan, who heard this track when it was a novelty as opposed to a legendary staple.

(Photo by: Universal Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)