"Help!" By The Beatles Video Showcase

"Help!" is a song by The Beatles that served as the title song for both the album Help! and the film Help!.

It was also released as a single, and was #1 for three weeks in both the UK and USA. "Help!" was written primarily by John Lennon, but credited as usual to Lennon/McCartney.

Paul McCartney reports that he had a hand in writing the song as well, being called in "to complete it" in a two-hour joint writing session at Lennon's house.

In 2004, "Help!" was ranked number 29 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. As revealed in the miniseries The Beatles Anthology, Lennon wrote the lyrics of the song to express his stress coming from the quick rise to a massive level of success for The Beatles after years of obscurity. The rest of the band felt somehow surprised learning this, but they considered it normal.

Since Lennon's feelings of insecurity were incongruous with the band's image of confidence, Lennon felt it was nearly impossible for the fans to understand the origin of the song. "I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for 'Help'," Lennon told Playboy.

In the 1970 Rolling Stone "Lennon Remembers" interviews, Lennon said that because of its honesty it was one of his favorites among the Beatles songs he wrote, but he wished they had recorded it at a slower tempo. In these interviews, Lennon said he felt that "Help!" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were his most genuine Beatles songs and not just songs written to order.

Read the Wikipedia article about Help! (song)...

Photo author: erglantz from flickr.com