How the Beatles Wrote Their Songs: From Early Demos to Final Recordings

"Musi­cian and YouTu­ber David Ben­nett has made it his project to attain the sec­ond kind of knowl­edge, and on his ded­i­cat­ed series UnBea­t­led, to share it with the pub­lic. In each UnBea­t­led video he ana­lyzes just one song - "Help!," "Here Comes the Sun," "Pen­ny Lane," and so on - at a lev­el of detail fine enough to neces­si­tate not just break­ing it down to its com­po­nent tracks, but also exam­in­ing the demos and unre­leased takes record­ed in the stu­dio."

"This process can reveal a great deal about the Bea­t­les' song­writ­ing process, as Ben­nett explains in the video at the top of the post. In the course of twen­ty min­utes, he cov­ers eleven songs, a selec­tion not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to the group's uni­ver­sal­ly praised com­po­si­tions."

"Take the first, "Yel­low Sub­ma­rine," whose ear­ly record­ings dif­fer both lyri­cal­ly, melod­i­cal­ly, and in time sig­na­ture from the ver­sion we know (and may or may not love), begin­ning with an idea of John's and being fur­ther shaped by Paul through its iter­a­tions. Anoth­er of John's musi­cal seeds is "Every­body Had a Hard Year," whose fin­ger­pick­ing pat­tern (orig­i­nal­ly learned from Dono­van in India) is also heard in "Julia" and "Dear Pru­dence," and wh"

A dedicated video series analyzes one Beatles song per episode, breaking each recording into component tracks and examining demos and unreleased takes. Episodes reveal how songs evolved through iterations, contributions from different band members, and changes in melody, lyrics, and time signature. The series condenses analysis of eleven songs into a twenty-minute overview while also diving deep into individual tracks. Examples include an early version of "Yellow Submarine" that shifted melodically, lyrically, and rhythmically from the familiar version, and a fingerpicking pattern from India that links "Everybody Had a Hard Year" with "Julia" and "Dear Prudence".

Read at Open Culture