Description
All You Need Is Love is a song written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was first performed on 25 June 1967 by the Beatles on Our World – the first worldwide satellite television live broadcast. The BBC commissioned the Beatles to write a song for the United Kingdom’s contribution, asking them to come up with a song with a message understood by everyone. In that, they certainly succeeded and the song’s subsequent popularity took it to number one in both the UK and the USA.
The song starts with the intro to the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, and also contains elements from Wayne Shanklin’s 1958 hit Chanson D’Amour. The song is notable for its asymmetric time signature. The prominent cello line and the use of unusual orchestration (including Lennon on harpsichord and banjo, McCartney on double bass, Harrison on violin and producer George Martin on piano amongst 13 other studio musicians) also draws attention to the departure from pop-single normality and into the realms of ‘baroque pop’.
During the single’s long fade-out snatches of other pieces of music can be heard including parts of a Bach two-part invention and Glen Miller’s In the Mood, as well as the Beatles’ own She Loves You – a Lennon improvisation in rehearsal that stuck.
For copyright reasons this title is only available in printed sheet music format. Also for copyright reasons, it is not available to customers in North America and Japan.
