“And I Love Her” is a dark and mysterious gem of songwriting

What is it about?

“And I Love Her” is a simple love song, but it feels like more.

The lyrics hold no story about how the couple met, no flirtation, and no promise of a wedding. The singer does not tell us what his lover looks like or describe their time together.

Instead, he looks at the feeling. He has found a love that seems larger than the moment in which he is singing.

That gives the song a quiet, almost cosmic quality. The darkness, the sky, the changing light, and the declarations of love. The feeling seems to exist beyond ordinary time.

Yet the song never becomes grandiose. The singer is not trying to explain love. He is saying that this woman matters to him deeply.

The repetition is part of its strength. “And I love her” is not an argument or a conclusion. It is a fact he keeps returning to because there is little else to say. The words are plain, but the music gives them weight.

That may be why the song feels different from many romantic songs of its period. There is no heartbreak waiting around the corner and no playful courtship. There is only the strange experience of realizing that another person has become deeply important to you and saying so without embarrassment.

The acoustic guitars and clave reinforce that feeling. The rhythm is gentle and steady, while the guitars leave space around the voice. The arrangement offers the lyrics with tenderness.

So the song is not about an event. It is about the moment when love stops being a possibility and becomes something known. The singer does not ask what will happen. He simply knows what he feels.

Imbedded in the midst of the Beatles’ 1964 “Hard Day’s Night”, “And I Love Her” is a dark and mysterious gem of songwriting. With cunning subtlety, no wasted notes and an awareness beyond their years, the boys from Liverpool penned a poignant love song imbued with hope, fear and sadness, and the sense of romance as something born in the unplumbed depths of the universe.

This wasn’t the only time they transcended their “cute and funny” image and expressed wisdom beyond their years.

Talking about life with depth

Two other examples are “When I’m Sixty-four”
“When I get older losing my hair, Many years from now, Will you still be sending me a valentine /
Birthday greetings bottle of wine? /
If I'd been out till quarter to three /
Would you lock the door, Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four?”

... and “Getting Better”
“I used to be cruel to my woman /
I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved /
Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene /
And I'm doing the best that I can (Ooh) /
I admit it's getting better (Better) /
A little better all the time (It can't get more worse) /
Yes I admit it's getting better (Better) /
It's getting better since you've been mine”.

Fourth song, on the complexities of love

And there's yet another example of suprising depth to their lyrics, which I suppose just got lost in the fervor of Beatlemania: “Girl.” Melodically, the song comes across like a young man's adoration for his capricious lover. That melody and its emotional aura make it easy to overlook more serious themes woven into the words:
“Was she told when she was young that pain /
Would lead to pleasure? /
Did she understand it when they said /
That a man must break his back to earn /
His day of leisure? /
Will she still believe it when he's dead? /
Ah girl, girl, girl /
Ah girl, girl, girl”

How did these two young men possess the foresight to create such vulnerable and worldly recordings while in their 20s?

Good songs become part of people's lives, sometimes in amusing or onforeseen ways. Here is a 2006 fan comment about “And I Love Her”...

This song was playing the second time I rolled a car. As I struggled to get myself out through the broken passenger side window, that was now directly above me, I couldn't help but sing along.”

“And I Love Her” makes use of deceptively simple harmonic quirks and rides on a shifting musical foundation. It seems to rely in part on some Romany European tradition, yet it is free of the constraints of a standard folk or pop song.

The song like many of the best that John and Paul wrote, has been subject to every kind of scrutiny. It could just as easily be pondered by a poet or philosopher. Better yet, absorb its mysteries and make it yours.

As artists, the Beatles rarely got full credit for their willingness to make themselves vulnerable. Here is Paul McCartney talking about the last time he saw bandmate George Harrison, who died on Nov. 29, 2001:

He was very sick and I held his hand for four hours. As I was doing it I was thinking, ‘I’ve never held his hand before, ever. This is not what two Liverpool fellas do, no matter how well you know each other.’ I kept thinking, 'He’s going to smack me here.’ But he didn’t. He just stroked my hand with his thumb and I thought ‘Ah, this is OK, this is life. It’s tough but it’s lovely. That’s how it is.’ I knew George before I knew any of the others and I loved that man. I’m so proud to have known him. Still, as sad as it was, you take the great bit, which was that last time you saw him, and that’s what you remember. That and all the other lovely memories.

They tapped into a deep wellspring of emotion; “And I Love Her” seems not so much like a pop tune as it does a haunting plea for warmth from inside the eternal night of loneliness. Two minutes and 28 seconds of purity.

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