Love Me Do

Young McCartney

Love Me Do is The Beatles first single in the UK. Written by Paul McCartney in his younger days, Love Me Do is a simple song with a simple melody based around 2 simple chords: G7 and C, before moving to D for its middle eight. If you listen/read the lyrics, you will find that most of them are of one syllable i.e. love, me, do, you, know. The only word that is not one syllable is someone, which of course a word that consist of two one syllable word. That is how simple the song is. 


Originally, the song was sung as a Everly Brothers-style duet, with Lennon singing "love me do" at the end of each verse. When Lennon decided to add the harmonica to the song, Paul had to sing Lennon's part at the end since Lennon could not play the harmonica riff and sing at the same time.

Lennon playing the harmonica

There were many songs at that time with the same simple message of "I Love You and You Love Me". However Love Me Do by The Beatles stands out as it was set to a gospel blues style of play. To add to the uniqueness of the song is the Lennon's harmonica introduction at the start of the song greatly adds to the blues effect that the song was meant to be. These two combined enabled the song to stand out and become The Beatles first hit.

Lennon and McCartney

An interesting fact is that the word Love is repeated 21 times in the song itself. Of course, many a die-hard Beatles fanatics would make something out of this, but Paul McCartney has this to say about Love Me Do: 

 "Love Me Do was one of our greatest philosophical songs... for it is simple and true, making it incredibly simple"


Love Me Do was the first Beatles song that I have learned to play with on guitar, and the first Beatles song that I remembered the lyrics to. It's so simple and easy and enjoyable. I hope you find the joy that I experienced listening to this song.