The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is the best adolescent pop song ever, according to Brian May of Queen. He mentioned the song as one of the elements that would make John Lennon timeless. Despite this, both the Fab Four and other musicians have written greater adolescent pop tunes.
Queen’s Brian May felt The Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was 1 of John Lennon’s gems
In a 2020 interview with Loudersound, May claimed that John was The Beatles’ most skilled band member. May said, “Lennon, from a frankly less-than-glamorous teenager with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, developed into the coolest guy on Earth”
He added, “He was cool enough to write the greatest teen pop song ever (in my humble etc.) ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand;’ to embrace psychedelia and make it musically valid; to leave The Beatles when he felt it had all become a shallow game he didn’t want to play anymore; and then to put his whole being into promoting peace in his solo work, producing almost certainly the greatest, most daring and personally revealing solo albums ever made, including songs such as ‘Jealous Guy,’ the soul-bearing ‘God,’ and the immortal anthem for mankind, ‘Imagine,'”
May also stressed what a great guy John was, “Lennon, for all of us post-revolution (whatever that was) musos, was, is, and always will be … it.” He said, “I rest my case.”
Several other Beatles songs overshadowed that 1
John was the cutest thing ever. But May’s interpretation of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” sounds strange. Despite being a classic, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is arguably not the greatest adolescent pop song ever. Other early Beatles songs like “I Feel Fine,” “Love Me Do,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” are better representations of the style.
Additionally, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is inferior to later teen pop songs like Britney Spears’ “… Baby One More Time” and the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way.” To aficionados of classic rock, that might seem blasphemous, but it’s the truth. There is a reason why songs by Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys are played on the radio more frequently than “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Additionally, compared to other Fab Four songs, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is typically played less frequently on current radio stations.
How ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ impacted the American charts and other singers
Regardless, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles was a big success. The song spent an incredible seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song spent a total of 15 weeks on the chart. The fact that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” became the group’s first No. 1 hit in the US may be its most remarkable feature.
A number of stars also covered the song. Al Green, The Crickets, and The Supremes all gave “I Want to Hold Your Hand” their own unique interpretations.
Although May overvalued it, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a beautiful song.
