Episode 044: “Can’t Buy Me Love”
It sold 2 million copies in a day and knocked America off its feet—but was “Can’t Buy Me Love” the beginning of the end for the Beatles’ greatest songwriting era? In this episode, Peter and Kenyon dissect the band’s first true solo-credited hit, where Paul McCartney goes it alone vocally and compositionally, breaking the “eyeball to eyeball” method that had defined Lennon-McCartney’s early work. The duo explores the track’s Paris hotel origins, its 12-bar blues structure, and George Martin’s now-iconic chorus-as-intro innovation. They also cover George Harrison’s first truly great solo, Geoff Emerick’s surprise engineering debut, and the stereo hi-hat overdub secretly performed by producer Norman Smith. From Ella Fitzgerald’s same-year cover to the infamous Paris residency that birthed the song, this episode unpacks both the musical brilliance and behind-the-scenes tension of a record that signaled a changing tide in the Beatles’ dynamic—and history.
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