Why did The Beatles release different singles in the UK and US?
When The Beatles first began cutting their teeth on the charts, the singles market was the first place anyone thought of success. All of their idols, like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, had made their living off their singles, and even if they had fantastic albums in their back catalogue, most people were able to remember a single song rather than the entire body of work. The album hadn’t become the accepted art form quite yet, but even if it was a collection of songs, the Fab Four didn’t have as much of a say in their work as you’d expect when they were putting out their first records.
Then again, that was because they had a lot of growing up to do whenever they got into the studio. George Martin was the one who saw potential in them when they started working on Parlophone Records, and when they were having trouble articulating most of their thoughts, he guided them in the right direction, even telling them that they had their first major hit when working on ‘Please Please Me’.
They may have been turning into the biggest phenomenon in England, but for any major rock and roll band, America was one of the first places that they thought of for a successful career. They would eventually swallow the country whole when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, but it took the rest of the country a while to catch on when they first started blowing up, with Capitol Records initially rejecting their material.
Once the country was actually won over by the ludicrous concept of making a lot of money, things started to look a little different for the singles market. After all, they were now in the American market, and if they wanted to leave the right first impression, that meant that they would have to play by the country’s rules if they wanted to get anywhere.
While every fan eventually got to hear every Beatles song they wanted, that meant that a few tunes either got mismatched on albums or put out as singles without their permission. A song like ‘Twist and Shout’, for instance, was another album track and a brilliant cover tune, but compared to the US? All the way to number one, which is by far the most recognition any of their singles received.
That also had to do with the way the band released their albums as well. Martin and the band always felt that fans would be ripped off if they got an album that already had the singles on it, but since singles were expected on albums in the US, that meant switching up the track orders as well, even making entirely new albums like Beatles ‘66 and The Beatles’ Second Album.
Although this kind of practice was looked down upon by every member of the band, it did at least give Americans a different look at how the band sounded. Since John Lennon famously hated ‘Eight Days A Week’, it was never going to be put out as a single, but since the American market didn’t care about such things, fans got to hear the absolute euphoria of the tune on the radio every chance they could.
This kind of logistical nightmare may be an absolute chore for archivists to keep up with, but it does help give a unique glimpse into a different way of listening to the Fab Four. The band eventually insisted that the releases stay the same on both sides of the Atlantic, but while the British body of work is considered the official canon these days, it feels wrong to think that a song as brilliant as ‘Yesterday’ was nothing more than an album track.