"Tell Me Why" A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

Welcome to Track Chatter, where we choose a different song to discuss in depth. This entry is part of an ongoing series in which we reconsider songs by The Beatles. Can anything new be said about this band or its music? Have a look below and let us know what you think.

And along comes A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles third studio album, and the first to include only Beatles compositions. And what compositions they are! A Hard Day’s Night includes some of the band’s best-known early hits, and (arguably) some of the staples of early ‘60s pop/rock music. In addition to the title track, there’s “I Should Have Known Better,” “And I Love Her,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and “Any Time at All.” Regardless of whether the songs would stand up today, it would be hard to argue for any pop album released today containing an equal number of well-loved tracks.

A Hard Day’s Night was the first Beatles album to be recorded on four-track tape, which meant that stereo mixes were possible. However, while stereo releases of Beatles album would become more regular throughout the decade, the band and producer George Martin tended to concern themselves mainly with overseeing the production of the mono mixes.

Moving away from George Harrison, “Tell Me Why” is the first Lennon/McCartney track we’ll be discussing, and it features lead vocals by John Lennon. It would be hard to call it an “unknown” track, but as we move through the Beatles’ catalogue, it will become increasingly difficult to say that about any of their songs. In any case, it could be argued that it’s lesser known than many of the big hits mentioned above.



Lew chose this track, so we’ll let him open the discussion.

Lew: “Tell Me Why” is the first Lennon/McCartney track that we’re discussing, and I'm excited about it. I think it's always easier to sell George songs to people that don't like The Beatles, because they're not as well-known, and also because he's not as well-known as a personality. I suspect there's some inclination to say, “oh well - if only John and Paul had let George write more, the band would have been better” or sentiments along those lines. I completely disagree, but I'm sure that goes without saying. In any case, if (as we discussed in the introduction) we're going to try to consider The Beatles on their own merits, Lennon and McCartney are giant elephants in the room.

This track is credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but I'm personally inclined to say that it's mainly a John song - it has a number of fingerprints that suggest his style of songwriting to me. However, before we get into analyzing the song itself, I want to use our discussion of “Tell Me Why” as an opportunity to make a comment about John Lennon as a vocalist, which I think may play a part in later discussions, as well: I think he was one of the first rock singers to successfully marry a rougher vocal style to lyrics that expressed vulnerability - a juxtaposition that’s been serving rock musicians quite well for some time. It's difficult to point things like that out, because I think it's part of what stands in between people and enjoying the Beatles (which I think we've covered!), but I also think it's necessary to recognize exactly what made him such a compelling figure. In any case I'll pause here, before I start trying to reconstruct rock history via The Beatles. I'd like to give Aaron a chance to give us any general thoughts that he might have on “Tell Me Why.”

Aaron: Well, my first thought was happiness at hearing that you’d chosen this as the track from A Hard Day’s Night because I thought it would give us a chance to get into talking about Motown a bit more. But that’ll have to wait because I’d like to pick up on one or two things you’ve already brought up. First, I think you’re quite right about this song having been written solely by John. According to one account I’ve read, it was actually knocked off near the end of filming of A Hard Day’s Night because another song was needed. Apparently, John never cared all that much for it.

Moving on to John’s vocals, I’m not sure I could say with certainty where he fits in the spectrum of adding “rough” vocals to vulnerable lyrics. I do know that from the onset of electronic recording in the late 1920s, the trend among white American singers had been towards crooner-style vocalization (and why not – that intimacy with the microphone was a huge advance in the recording of singers and made the careers of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and so many others). Popular rock music, in its earliest incarnations, seems to have followed that trend. If we think of singers like Elvis, Buddy Holly, or Bill Haley, it’s pretty clear that, while they may have been experimenting with phrasing and other elements of delivery, they generally maintained the “smooth” vocals trend of earlier recorded pop.

However, as the roots of rock are notoriously hazy, I’d be loath to claim “first” for almost anything. It’s pretty easy to point to rough vocalizations in rock, blues, and even jazz and pop pre-Beatles. But rough vocals with vulnerable lyrics? It’s hard to say. I certainly can’t think of a ton of examples (any thoughts from readers?).

All those caveats aside, Lennon certainly was a master of this approach. As you well know, A Hard Day’s Night includes quite a few examples of this type of singing on his part (and some from Paul, too, which should be no surprise considering how much time they’d spent together at this point). But let’s get back to the song. What do you think John’s singing brings to “Tell Me Why”? Would the song have worked with a more traditional crooner approach, or does it need to be a little rough around the edges?

Lew: I'm interested in the Motown angle you mentioned - let's not lose that.

I should definitely qualify my remarks about John's vocal performance a bit - looking back, I think they could be taken the wrong way. For one thing, let me say that I completely agree that there were "rough" singers out there well before the Beatles. I guess when I made that remark about rough singing that conveys a sense of vulnerability, I was thinking of the way that rock has become a very cathartic mode of expression - both for the performer and the audience. I think it's fair to say that (this is shooting from the hip a little), prior to the second half of the 20th century, vocal music was most often not written by the singer. To go back to the example of the crooners and jazz singers that you mentioned, very few wrote their own material - they weren't expected to write. So, while the singer might do a masterful interpretation of a song and create a moment of catharsis for the audience, there wasn't the sense of complete disclosure that came along later with rock singers who were visibly trying to work something from their own lives out, and using those experiences to provide the basis for their songwriting. I think that Lennon is an early example of someone who saw the possibility of blending personal experience with entertainment in a way that few other people were seeing it at the time (although “Don't Bother Me” has that kind of honesty as well).

To get specific about the song, and actually answer the question that you asked, I do think that John's slightly rough vocal works better than a smoother approach would have done. He's obviously not screaming - there's a lot of restraint in the way he sounds a little ragged without ever really pushing it - but that raggedness adds an exhausted quality to the question that frames the song. He's desperate to figure out what's going on. Of course, when I phrase it like that, it almost sounds like we're discussing a dirge, which isn't the case. “Tell Me Why” is musically very upbeat.

Aaron: I like what you’ve picked up on here – the mixture of Lennon’s confessional style of writing with his somewhat ragged delivery – for a couple of reasons. First, the typical rendering of the Beatles’ story usually has them being not much more than a bubblegum boy band before they encountered Dylan (in more ways than one) and became convinced that they needed to write lyrics of greater depth. I wouldn’t deny that there’s some truth to that. From 1965 onward they definitely seem to have wanted to broaden their sound and . . . I don’t know . . . go for something more mature, both lyrically and compositionally. However, even in the early days, they were already writing about their own life experiences, even if they continued to place the lyrics within bubblegum-like structures. McCartney has definitely described Lennon’s early writing as being based on his own life and such things as the struggles in his first marriage to Cynthia (even though, apparently, the rest of the band was not always aware of this). So in that sense, you’re right on the money when you describe Lennon as “blending personal experience with entertainment in a way that few people were seeing it at the time,” and I don’t think the band gets enough credit for that.

Also, back to his singing style, another great thing about early Lennon and McCartney vocals (less so, I think, with Harrison) was their ability to blend rough and smooth, and to rely on both the single voice and various approaches to melody, within the same song. We’ve talked in previous posts about how early Lennon/McCartney songwriting efforts were often based in pre-existing pop and RnB forms, but one of the things that made their approach fresh was how well they were able to integrate various stylistic elements from different forms into new takes on the pop song. “Tell Me Why” starts out like a lot of typical Motown numbers, with that great rolling intro, and the chorus and parts of the verses use the kind of melodic vocal arrangements you would expect from such a song. But then, when Lennon is singing on his own, that’s when the rougher approach comes out, which is much more based in the early rock n roll stuff he loved like Chuck Berry (and we can’t forget that almost bizarre falsetto harmony bit during the bridge!). And yet, in this song it sounds like a natural match. Again, it’s unlikely that Lennon was the first to sing like this, but that he and the band did it so well – I guess that’s part of what made that combination of confession with raggedness within a pop structure so appealing to so many singers who came later.

Lew: I agree that you can see a shift toward bringing more honesty to the lyrics that really started after this album. I think Beatles For Sale generally gets the nod as the first instance of that change, but I'd say that you don't really see it take full effect until Help!, which despite the silliness of the movie, has some fairly intense songs on it. I'd probably make the suggestion that Lennon had always leaned toward that style of writing, and never needed more than a small push to embrace that approach, but that's not a supportable opinion. Having said that, I still think "Tell Me Why" is trying to express something closer to personal experience, and I think that other Lennon songs in the early Beatles' catalogue ("This Boy," for example) seem to have a more sincere quality than some of the straighter pop tracks that they wrote around the same time.

I think it's interesting that the intro for "Tell Me Why" feels like a Motown song to you, although obviously Lennon's statement that it was like a "New York girl group song" tends to reinforce that idea. I have to admit that I think of power chords when I hear the intro - probably because I'm so much more immersed in music that sounds like that. It makes me think of any number of hard rock songs that start off with loud guitars hitting the riff before the vocals start. Again, I think your analysis is probably more correct, but I think it's interesting that we're hearing it in such different ways. It makes me think that "Tell Me Why" is bridging some kind of gap between the styles that we're hearing in it. That's hypothesis at best, I suppose, but I like looking for those kinds of connections, even when they seem a little tenuous.

Aaron: Wow, I guess because I generally don’t think of songs in terms of power chords (or, really, any chords), I never would have picked up on that. To me, the intro is reminiscent of something like “Heatwave” or even, somewhat sped up, “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” Do you have any examples in mind of hard rock songs that “Tell Me Why” recalls for you? I’d be really interested to get a better handle on how you’re hearing it. It is pretty interesting that we’re both coming at the song from such different places.

As to Lennon’s lyrics, you know, I always just sort of accepted the whole Dylan-influence story. I think part of the “problem” of listening to the Beatles is that, with their hits catalogue, I’ve heard the songs so many times that I don’t often stop to think about what the lyrics are saying. And because so many of the early songs are close to pure pop, I often lazily just thought all those songs were “I want to hold your hand.” But listening to John sing something like “Did you have to treat me oh so bad / All I do is hang my head and moan,” it’s pretty clear that it’s not an “I want to hold your hand” moment. That he got better at writing such sentiments could have had as much to do with age and experience as with strictly being advised by Dylan to drop the bubble-gum act (I don’t mean to discount Dylan’s influence; it just seems fruitful to try to look past the obvious anecdotes). You brought up Help!, and it contains an instructive example. As much of a downer as the lyric I just quoted is, it’s not all that “good” in terms of the writing. But when we get to “Hide Your Love Away” and he sings, “Here I stand, head in hand / turn my face to the wall,” he’s essentially saying the same thing as he does in “Tell Me Why”, content-wise. But the effect is so much greater because of the economy of the writing, the imagery, the odd use of the singular for “hand.” I guess it’s to be expected, though, that their songwriting chops would improve over time, regardless of particular influences.

Lew: There are a lot of songs that I thought of while trying to answer your question about what the intro to “Tell Me Why” reminds me of. I'll talk about them in a minute, but I'll preface that by saying that a big part of why this intro reminds me of certain things is that I guess I just connect The Beatles much more to the rock music that came after them than to Motown tracks that were coming around the same time that they were releasing their early albums. So, in that respect, this intro makes me think of “All Day and All of the Night” or “I Can't Explain” more than it does "Heatwave." To take it a little further and talk about what I actually thought of first when I tried to answer this question, I'd have to say “Anarchy in the UK” or “Master of Puppets.” Those songs are coming from a much different place, musically and lyrically, but I think that their intros serve a similar function of turning around into the body the song.

Also, I thought I'd mention, since I referenced the term “turnaround” above that the beginning of “Tell Me Why” is what's called a ii-V progression (E minor to A major or dominant 7), which is, in most respects, the primary building block of jazz harmony (at least up to the late 50's or so). As we discussed in our entry on “Don't Bother Me,” the V chord leads the ear back to the tonic chord (D major here), and is often called a “turnaround,” although “cadence” is probably the more theoretically recognized term. Regardless, it's a move that you see happening a lot in standards like "Autumn Leaves,” or at a more complex level “All the Things You Are.” I found that interesting because Lennon's the Beatle that I think of least likely to randomly grab a jazz progression, but at the beginning of this song, there's a little textbook jazz thing happening, which flips over into introducing the chorus. It's neat.

Aaron: It is neat. I guess, going back to our question of relevance, one of the things about the Beatles that makes them not only a great band, but also a fascinating case study into the ongoing development of pop music, is the way in which they simultaneously hearken back to earlier forms, reflect contemporary trends, and prefigure future developments. “Tell Me Why” is a great example. How many songs are there about which one can say it recalls earlier jazz, mirrors contemporary Motown, and looks forward to the development of punk? (By the way, I’d love to see an interviewer present the idea to John Lydon that “Anarchy in the UK” has its roots in The Beatles!) In that sense, the tune is incredibly relevant in that it speaks to the way that pop bands today are more willing and happy to call on a variety of references than perhaps they have been in the recent past (or so it seems to me, anyway).

Lew: Yes, I think this discussion makes a great case for The Beatles’ continued relevance, and I think it’s a strong place to wrap up our discussion of “Tell Me Why.” My sense is that we're going to be discussing that quality of incorporating tradition, capturing the “now,” and prefiguring later developments that you mention with increasing frequency as we move into a new phase of songwriting for The Beatles. And, we'll be doing it with the knowledge that John Lydon owes The Beatles a debt which can never be repaid! Coming up next, we'll be looking at a track from Beatles For Sale.