Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

How about the key of "E": Please Please Me, Helter Skelter, Nowhere Man, It won't be long, I'm drawing a blank at the moment for more! Christian

Oh, "And your bird can sing" and "All I've got to do" are in E as well. Christian

The Beatles' played in many keys. The point of this thread was that the compositions in the key of G have gone on to be number one hits more often than compositions in any other key. There may be no rhyme nor reason to this fact, but I suspect it is not a random event.

Don't Let Me Down is in E, no?

What I find interesting is while Lennon composed a number of his early hits in G, after early '67 none of his more famous releases, A or B sides, were in G. As best as I can tell few if any of his future compositions were in G, but were in a variety of keys. I can't be definitive on this but it appears so.

This is indeed interesting Stan and certainly shows his development as an artist. I think that this observation is some bit of proof that he played in G early on as it was, perhaps, as throwback to his more limited guitar skills in the beginning. As Christian has pointed out, he wasn't a one-key writer.

In addition to his growth as an artist I also think Lennon was done with writing the consummate 'pop' single. If you look at their hits after '66, only three were penned by Lennon. McCartney cranked out another seven. Prior, it was Lennon who had written the vast majority of the groups hits, or co-authored them with McCartney.

And to pick nits further, I believe "Rain" was actually recorded in A but then slowed down to a G.

"Altogether now" key of "G"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll guess we'll have to start new threads for all the different keys, as the other keys are not the purpose of this thread!! Whew! Ok, more in "G". Everybody rumble!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Christian

It's hard for me to imagine an ENTIRE thread about ONE KEY. The Beatles probably shake their heads when they see how much we analyze ancient history like this; after all, Paul & Ringo don't care what kind of Ricks we play!! Christian

I agree Christian, one need not restrict this discussion to one key. It just seemed to me that providing a long list of songs and the keys they were recorded in, may not provide a meaningful answer to the intial question posed.

As three tenors, they might have felt they sounded their best with the average melody note as a D and the highest note as a G (on the E string), moving to falsetto for higher parts. The key of A means you'll have to nail some high A's. Just a thought.

Do you mean to tell me all those songs were in G???
Heck, I guess my turntable was fast. I learned em all in Ab!!!! No wonder i was kicked out of that band in 9th grade!

And a very good thought at that James.

John and Paul relied on the open chords for a lot of their songs. I think you'll find that in some of the songs that aren't in the key of G. Whenever possible they capoed their guitars to allow them to still use the open chords.