From Me to You (single) 1963

1. From Me to You
- This is the third official Beatles single. It's B-Side is Thank You Girl.
- It was released between the albums Please Please Me and With The Beatles (both released in 1963), but features on neither of them. From this point on most of the band's singles would not feature on their albums.
- It was written as a fan-pleaser, the title is a reply to all the fan letters the band was already getting, and was inspired by the letters section of NME magainze, titled 'From Us to You'.
- Written by McCartney and Lennon while the band was on tour with Helen Shapiro. It was pretty much co-written 50/50.
- Kenny Lynch (he who tried to score a hit with a cover version of Misery), who was also on tour with the band at the time and fancied himself as a bit of a songwriter, sat down with the band to help them write it... after about half an hour he got frustrated with the way they would ignore the then-established rules of writing pop songs and told everyone on the bus that they were idiots, knew nothing about songwriting and that the song was "bloody rubbish!" He also called them 'fairies' for singing the "woo" bits.
- The song ends on a minor chord despite being in a major key, indicating the kind of rule-breaking that annoyed Kenny Lynch so much.
- This is the first Beatles song to use the aforementioned "woo" device, which would become one of the band's many trademarks. McCartney's use of this was inspired by Little Richard.
- Lennon sings the lead vocals, and plays the harmonica again.
- It was George Martin's idea to do the "da-da-da-da-da-dum-dum-dah" bit at the beginning, as well as using the harmonica for the intro.
- Both McCartney and Lennon felt that the song could be re-arranged as a blues/ragtime-styled tune and spoke about this in seperate interviews later in their careers.
- Reached #1 in the UK charts but failed to make an impression in America, where it was released as their first US single. It probably didn't help that American rock n roll artist Del Shannon (best known for the song Runaway) released a cover version of this song at the same time. Copies of the American first-pressing of this single are very sought after by Beatles-record collectors.
- It was later re-released in America in 1964 as the B-side to the US single for Please Please Me.
- It runs at just under 2 minutes and took 13 takes to record.
- The band also wrote an alternative version of this song with the title From Us to You, for use in a radio program of the same name (it ran from 1963-1965).

2. Thank You Girl
- The B-side to From Me to You. It doesn't feature on any of the Beatles UK studio albums, though it is on The Beatles' Second Album (the band's imaginatively titled album for the US market).
- Lennon had started writing this song and then McCartney filled in some gaps. This was originally intended as an A-side but both Lennon and McCartney came to regard it as a bit of a 'hack' job quite early on, especially after they wrote From Me to You. Lennon wrote the verses and McCartney did the chorus.
- Lennon sings the lead vocals, and also does some more of his trademark harmonica. His vocals are double-tracked here for the first time.
- At the time of it's recording, in 1963, two other songs were recorded as well - What Goes On and The One After 909. These songs would not turn up on any releases until much later on - specifically the albums Rubber Soul (1966) and Let It Be (1970).
- The version released on The Beatles' Second Album actually had a slightly different harmonica part.
- It was also released in America as the B-side to the US single for Do You Want to Know a Secret.
- Runs for 2 minutes, and took 28 takes to finish.

1992 CD single cover