"I Want to Hold Your Hand" is a song by the English rock band The Beatles. Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and recorded in October 1963, it was the first Beatles record to be made using four-track equipment.
With advance orders exceeding one million copies in the United Kingdom, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" would ordinarily have gone straight to the top of the British record charts on its day of release (29 November 1963) had it not been blocked by the group's first million seller "She Loves You", the Beatles' previous UK single, which was having a resurgent spell in the top position following intense media coverage of the group. Taking two weeks to dislodge its predecessor, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" stayed at number one for five weeks and remained in the UK top fifty for twenty-one weeks in total. It was also the group's first American number one, entering the Billboard Hot 100 chart on 18 January 1964 at number forty-five and starting the British invasion of the American music industry. By 1 February it held the number one spot — for seven weeks — before being replaced by "She Loves You", a reverse scenario of what had occurred in Britain, and remained in the US charts for a total of fifteen weeks. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" became the Beatles' best-selling single worldwide.
Read more about I Want To Hold Your Hand: Background and Composition, Musical Structure, In The Studio, Promotion and Release, Reception, Melody and Lyrics, Personnel, Cover Versions, Parodies and Sampling
Famous quotes containing the words hold and/or hand:
“I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)