50 years of Beatles’ Love me do: Keep it simple, stupid

I’m a little over 51, born in a house where music played a huge role. My father’s tastes ranged from to classical music to jazz to the very latest music of the time. In 1962, when I was one, the Beatles stormed the world with their first single – Love me do. I obviously have no clear, provable memory of listening to the song when I was 1 ½, but I’m sure I heard it every day till the next Beatles hit came along. For those who want a refresher, here it is: How could you not like this song? To begin with, it was a song that was impossible not to understand. Take a look at the heart of the song: [caption id=“attachment_480525” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Beatles. Getty Images.[/caption] “Love, love me do You know I love you I’ll always be true So please, love me do” The longest word in the song is ‘somebody’, all eight letters of it. Take a look at the entire lyrics here – and how on earth could there be anyone who didn’t understand every single word of the song? The next big song – and the Beatles first number one song – was Please Please me. The song continued the Beatles tradition of writing their own songs and (in their early phase) keeping the lyrics simple. “Last night I said these words to my girl I know you never even try, girl C’mon (C’mon), c’mon (C’mon), c’mon (C’mon), c’mon (C’mon) Please please me, whoa yeah, like I please you.” The longest word and the most difficult word to understand in the song? “Complaining”. Then came the superhit, From me to you. “If there’s anything that you want If there’s anything I can do Just call on me and I’ll send it along With love from me to you I’ve got everything that you want Like a heart that’s oh so true Just call on me and I’ll send it along With love from me to you.” The longest word and the most difficult word to understand in the song? “Satisfied”. The Beatles carried on in the same vein, keeping their songs rooted in falling in love, keeping the lyrics simple and easy to understand, and ensuring that each song had an eminently sing-along-able chorus. Here’s “She loves you” “You think you lost your love When I saw her yesterday It’s you she’s thinking of And she told me what to say She says she loves you And you know that can’t be bad Yes, she loves you And you know you should be glad” The longest and most difficult words in this one? “Yesterday” and “apologise”. To think that the Beatles comprised four youngsters from Liverpool, four youngsters who had no knowledge of anything even close to ‘marketing.’ But they knew, instinctively, what audiences wanted to hear, what made people tick. And they knew, decades before marketers coined the phrase, how to ‘keep it simple, stupid.’ The Beatles kept it simple. They wrote about emotions and situations which were easy to relate to, they used words that anyone could understand and pronounce. And that’s what makes us listen to Love me do 50 years after the song was first sung. And we’ll listen to Please Please me, we’ll listen to From me to you, we’ll listen to all the music they created. Because they created the music for us, not for themselves.