I Wanna Hold Your Hand (film) - Soundtrack

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack also features a total of 17 original Beatles recordings. They are:

  1. "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
  2. "Please Please Me"
  3. "I Saw Her Standing There"
  4. "Thank You Girl"
  5. "Boys"
  6. "Twist and Shout"
  7. "Misery"
  8. "Till There Was You"
  9. "Love Me Do"
  10. "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"
  11. "P.S. I Love You"
  12. "Please Mister Postman"
  13. "From Me to You"
  14. "Money (That's What I Want)"
  15. "There's a Place"
  16. "I Wanna Be Your Man"
  17. "She Loves You"

The song "She Loves You" was featured twice toward the end of the film. The first time was during the group's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday – February 9, 1964. For this sequence of the film, stand-in Beatle-lookalike doubles, dressed in identical attire and holding the same type of musical instruments in a similar manner, were seen mimicking the group's performance of the song from that show while being shown on the stage floor, albeit from a distance so as not to see their identities, while the actual footage of The Beatles on The Sullivan Show of 02/09/1964 was revealed from the camera operator's point-of-view. These two elements were combined together, along with reactions from the studio audience to recreate a brilliant moment in time. The second time "She Loves You" was featured occurred during the film's end credits.

Other songs by the Beatles, that were to be published years after their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, are referenced as in-jokes throughout the film. They are:

  1. "Helter Skelter", mentioned by an aristocratic woman who sojourns at the Beatles' hotel ("Things are all helter skelter!");
  2. "Get Back", mentioned by a cop trying to calm a riot against his arrest of a very young Beatles' fan ("Get back girls, get back!");
  3. "One After 909", "909" being the number of the hotel room of a man who is searching for a hooker in New York;
  4. "Polythene Pam", in the name of "Pam Mitchell", the girl that manages to sneak inside the Beatles' room and then has fetishistic behaviours towards objects and musical instruments belonging to the group. "Polythene Pam" was inspired by an evening that John spent with poet Royston Ellis and his girlfriend, Stephanie. The three wore polythene (a common British contraction of the word and the IUPAC version of the word polyethylene) bags and slept in the same bed out of curiosity about kinky sex.
  5. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", mentioned by a member of the Beatles' staff named Neil (probably a reference to the Beatles' road manager and personal assistant Neil Aspinall) while speaking to a cop after Pam has been discovered lying under John Lennon's bed ("Is that the bird that was under Lennon's bed?", a reference to a widespread interpretation that sees in "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" a confession of adultery).
  6. "Girl", once again during the scene in which Pam is discovered: the cop does not get the aforementioned "bird" allusion, and Neil promptly states: "Girl"; to make this reference even clearer, the cop answers: "Girl, girl" (mimicking the chorus of the song). Noticeably, as the dialogue goes on, Neil speaks about an arrangement he made with Brian (a reference to the real Beatles' manager Brian Epstein) concerning how to handle the situation with the press.

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