A-side "Day Tripper" Format 7" Length 2:15 | Released 3 December 1965 Genre Folk rock | |
Recorded 20 and 29 October 1965
EMI Studios, London | ||
"We Can Work It Out" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. It was first issued as a double A-side single with "Day Tripper" in December 1965. The release marked the first time that both tracks on a Beatles single were designated as joint A-sides. The song was recorded during the sessions for the band's Rubber Soul album.
Contents
- Composition
- Recording and release
- Personnel
- Deep Purple version
- Stevie Wonder version
- Other cover versions
- In popular culture
- References
"We Can Work It Out" is a comparatively rare example of a Lennon–McCartney collaboration from this period in the Beatles' career, in that it recalls the level of collaboration the two songwriters had shared when writing the group's hit singles of 1963. This song, "A Day in the Life", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "I've Got a Feeling", are among the notable exceptions.
Composition
McCartney wrote the words and music to the verses and the chorus, with lyrics that "might have been personal", probably a reference to his relationship with Jane Asher. McCartney then took the song to Lennon:
I took it to John to finish it off, and we wrote the middle together. Which is nice: 'Life is very short. There's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.' Then it was George Harrison's idea to put the middle into 3/4 time, like a German waltz. That came on the session, it was one of the cases of the arrangement being done on the session.
With its intimations of mortality, Lennon's contribution to the twelve-bar bridge contrasts typically with what Lennon saw as McCartney's cajoling optimism, a contrast also seen in other collaborations by the pair, such as "Getting Better" and "I've Got a Feeling". As Lennon told Playboy in 1980:
In We Can Work It Out, Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out / We can work it out'—real optimistic, y'know, and me, impatient: 'Life is very short, and there's no time / For fussing and fighting, my friend.'
Based on those comments, some critics overemphasised McCartney's optimism, neglecting the toughness in passages written by McCartney, such as "Do I have to keep on talking until I can't go on?". Lennon's middle shifts focus from McCartney's concrete reality to a philosophical perspective in B minor, illustrating this with the waltz-time section suggested by George Harrison that leads back to the verse, possibly meant to suggest tiresome struggle.
Music critic Ian MacDonald said:
[Lennon's] passages are so suited to his Salvation Army harmonium that it's hard to imagine them not being composed on it. The swell-pedal crescendos he adds to the verses are, on the other hand, textural washes added in the studio, the first of their kind on a Beatles record and signposts to the enriched sound-palette of Revolver.
Recording and release
The Beatles recorded "We Can Work It Out" on 20 October 1965, four days after its accompanying single track, with an overdub session on 29 October. They spent nearly 11 hours on the song, by far the longest expenditure of studio time up to that point.
In a discussion about which song to release as a single, Lennon argued for "Day Tripper", differing with the majority view that "We Can Work It Out" was a more commercial song. As a result, the single was marketed as the first "double A-side", but airplay and point-of-sale requests soon proved "We Can Work It Out" to be more popular. The record reached number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, the Beatles' fastest-selling single since "Can't Buy Me Love", their previous McCartney-led A-side in the UK. It has sold 1.39 million copies in the UK.
"We Can Work It Out" was the last of six number one singles in a row on the American charts, a record at the time. It was preceded by "I Feel Fine", "Eight Days a Week", "Ticket to Ride", "Help!" and "Yesterday". The song became the band's 11th number one, accomplished in just under two years since their debut on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Both sides of the single entered the Hot 100 on the week ending 18 December 1965. On 8 January 1966, "We Can Work It Out" hit number 1 on the chart, while "Day Tripper" entered the top 10 at number 10. "We Can Work It Out" spent three non-consecutive weeks at number 1, while "Day Tripper" peaked at number 5.
The Beatles made 10 black-and-white promo films for television broadcasters on 23 November 1965, at Twickenham Film Studios in London, as they were often unable to make personal appearances by that time. Three of the films were mimed performances of "We Can Work It Out", in all of which Lennon was seated at a harmonium. The most frequently broadcast of the three versions was a straightforward performance piece with the group wearing black suits. Another had the group wearing the stage suits from their Shea Stadium performance on 15 August; the third opens with a shot of Lennon with a sunflower in front of his eye.
In 1991, McCartney played an acoustic version of the song for his MTV Unplugged performance, later released on Unplugged (The Official Bootleg).
One of the November 1965 promo films was included in the Beatles' 2015 video compilation 1, and two were included in the three-disc versions of the compilation, titled 1+.
Personnel
MacDonald was not sure whether or not Harrison sang a harmony vocal part. MacDonald praised the tambourine playing and noted that some sources attribute it to Harrison, not Starr. However, MacDonald considers it more likely that Starr played the instrument on the recording.
Deep Purple version
Deep Purple covered it on their second album The Book of Taliesyn, from 1968. The band drastically reworked it, as they always did with covers. The first three minutes of the song is a fast, progressive instrumental jam incorporating themes from classical music (notably Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet) called "Exposition," which seamlessly drifts over into the actual Beatles song.
Such overblown arrangements and attempts at making a rather simple song sound epic, was normal for Deep Purple in this period, and they had already followed the same structure on their covers on the debut album (such as The Leaves' "Hey Joe"). Reportedly, the band recorded their version of the song because Paul McCartney himself had stated that he was really fond of their previous Beatles cover, "Help!", which was featured on Shades of Deep Purple. It was never performed live again after 1969.
Stevie Wonder version
In 1970, Stevie Wonder covered the song on his album Signed, Sealed & Delivered, and released it as a single in 1971. That single reached #13 on the Billboard Hot 100. Stevie Wonder's cover version earned his second Grammy Award nomination in 1972, for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.
Wonder performed his version of the song for McCartney after the latter was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990.
In 2010, after McCartney was awarded the Gershwin Prize by the Library of Congress, Wonder (who had himself received the Gershwin Prize the year before) again performed his arrangement of the song at a White House ceremony held in McCartney's honor. Wonder performed it a third time in January 2014 at the 50th anniversary tribute of The Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.