Hold Me Tight
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Hold Me Tight" | ||
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| Song by The Beatles | ||
| from the album With the Beatles | ||
| Released | November 22, 1963 | |
| Genre | Rock and roll | |
| Length | 2:32 | |
| Label | Parlophone | |
| Writer(s) | McCartney/Lennon | |
| Producer(s) | George Martin | |
| With the Beatles track listing | ||
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"Hold Me Tight" is a Beatles song from their 1963 album With the Beatles. It was first recorded during the Please Please Me album session, but not selected for inclusion [1], and then re-recorded for their second album. It was the first of only two occasions when a song was held over from one Beatles album to appear on the next, "Wait" (left off Help then included on Rubber Soul) being the other[2].
"Hold Me Tight" was composed principally by McCartney in 1961, and was part of The Beatles stage act until 1963 [3][4]. It is generally considered one of the Beatles' weakest efforts. In their best-selling The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Roy Carr and Tony Tyler call it the album's poorest track, saying it "fails because McCartney's vision of the complete tune obviously sagged somewhat, and his distressingly out-of-tune singing became quite embarrassing after only a few bars."
Indeed, both Paul McCartney and John Lennon had, at one time or another, shared their distaste for the song, and in a 1980s interview with Mark Lewisohn in The Beatles Recording Sessions, McCartney says, "I can't remember much about that one. Certain songs were just 'work' songs, you haven't got much memory of them. That's one of them." In Barry Miles' Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the songwriter calls it "a failed attempt at a single which then became an acceptable album filler".[5]
Ian MacDonald redeems it however, in his book Revolution in the Head (P.64), he writes: “Play it loud with the bass boosted, and you have an overwhelming motoric [sic] rocker strongly redolent of the band’s live sound”.
McCartney wrote a different song called "Hold Me Tight" for a medley included on his 1973 solo album Red Rose Speedway.
[edit] Instrumentation
- Paul McCartney on bass, lead vocal
- John Lennon on rhythm guitar, backing vocal
- George Harrison on lead guitar, backing vocal
- Ringo Starr on drums
