(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 28 April 2026 20:56, UK
Looking back through the catalogue of songs registered under the inspiring moniker of The Beatles, I can see how easy it is to get lost.
Not only were the band prolific throughout the 1960s, delivering hundreds of classic songs, but the sentiments of those tracks range wildly between perfectly poised pop and deeply experimental intrusions into the psyches of broken men. It’s part of what makes the band so widely revered to this day.
This vast range of singles means that there is a good chance, within the millions of adoring fans, that every single one of their tunes is considered a favourite for one reason or another. But favourites and what might be considered their “best” are very different things.
The former term can be applied to the most mundane of music. Ubiquitous hits that remind us of days gone by or simple riffs that charge up our souls and rip our hearts can often be considered our favourite tunes. But finding out what might be the best song from The Beatles is a far more qualitative exploration that would not be without its twists and turns. Perhaps the easiest route to the answer is listening to the band themselves.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr routinely shared their thoughts on the group’s output and have, over the years, often shared what might be considered their favourites from the discography. However, there are only a few occasions when the musicians have picked out their best songs. One such moment came a little way into their reign as pop royalty when Lennon shared his thoughts on one of their newer hits, ‘Help!’.
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“We think it’s one of the best we’ve written,” said Lennon in 1965 as he contemplated the band’s single, a commissioned track for their new film Help!, taking notes from the film’s title. As ever with the Fab Four, a new movie meant a new album, and the Lennon-McCartney train looked like it showed no signs of slowing down.
Yet ‘Help!’ marked a subtle turning point in the band’s writing. Up until that moment, much of The Beatles’ catalogue had thrived on the buoyant optimism of young love and teenage excitement. With this number, Lennon opened the door to something a little more honest. Beneath the bright tempo and light-hearted guitars sat a lyric that felt unusually vulnerable for a band still marketed as the smiling kings of pop.
Behind the fast fame, quick money and unstoppable fandom, Lennon was already starting to long for the time before The Beatles took over his life. He would think back to the days when he could sit alone in his room, contemplating life’s mysteries without the pressure of producing a hit record every few months. In truth, he was crying out for help. On this track, he enters what he later called his “fat Elvis period”, yet still manages to create one of the band’s most cherished songs, one of his personal favourites, and possibly one of their very best.
The track is seemingly written with the film in mind, but hides many separate meanings and evocative moments for the song’s main composer. It’s a tune utterly beloved by the band’s fans and marked Lennon out as a future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. It saw Lennon put his heart on the page for all to see. As we know now, it’s that honesty that would quickly become one of Lennon’s greatest strengths as a songwriter.
In the years that followed, he would lean further into introspection with songs like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Julia’, turning personal doubt into something universal. In hindsight, ‘Help!’ feels like the moment the mask first slipped, when the world’s biggest pop star briefly stopped playing the part and admitted that fame had begun to weigh heavier than anyone realised.
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
During various interviews, Lennon pointed to ‘Help!’ as one of his favourite songs of the Fab Four. In 1970, he delivered a typically flagrant response after avoiding a simple question from Rolling Stone founder Jan Wenner on Lennon’s favourite song he ever wrote for The Beatles. Lennon says: ”I always liked ‘[I Am The] Walrus’, ‘Strawberry Fields’, ‘Help!’, ‘In My Life’,” Wenner soon interjects, “Why ‘Help!’?” Lennon delivers a notably colourful response, one rendered with his uncontrollable honesty.
The singer and guitarist replies, “Because I meant it, it’s real. The lyric is as good now as it was then, it’s no different, you know. It makes me feel secure to know that I was that sensible or whatever- well, not sensible, but aware of myself. That’s with no acid, no nothing… well pot or whatever.” Lennon clarifies his point:
“It was just me singing ‘help’ and I meant it, you know. I don’t like the recording that much, the song I like. We did it too fast to try and be commercial.”
John Lennon
It’s a notion that Lennon later expanded on during his now-iconic interview with David Sheff of Playboy in 1980. “The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension,” recalls Lennon as flashes of the mobs of fans and press flash across his brain, “When ‘Help’ came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it’s just a fast rock ‘n’ roll song”.
“I didn’t realise it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help,” he added. It was a moment when Lennon’s old personality, his old way of being, was beginning to lose out to the pop star the band had created.
“So it was my fat Elvis period,” he continues.
“You see the movie: He — I — is very fat, very insecure, and he’s completely lost himself,” Lennon added. “And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive… yes, yes… but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know.”
Luckily, the duality of getting older may well provide you with rose-tinted moments of youthful hopefulness that will never be attained again, but it also provides you with the knowledge to know what’s to come. “It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don’t know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little,” says Lennon, concluding the matter with his classic wit and curtness.
“Anyway, I was fat and depressed, and I was crying out for help.”
Often written off as another commercial number for The Beatles to lay more stones along the path to success. But, in fact, the song was deeply personal, entirely affected by its creator and a hint at the wonderful songs that were to come. ‘Help!’ isn’t just one of Lennon’s favourites; it might well be his greatest ever contribution to The Beatles.
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