Tell Me Why is a song from the Hard Day’s Night soundtrack and was written for a particular scene in the movie where the Beatles were performing in front of an audience at the Scala Theatre in London. John Lennon, who wrote the song said “They needed another upbeat song and I just knocked it off. It was like a Black-New-York-girl-group song”.

The Beatles were big fans of the girl groups, often basing their approach to vocal harmony and call-and-response arrangements on the genre (which predated Motown). As George Harrison said: “We always loved those American girl groups, like the Shirelles and the Ronettes, so yeah we developed our harmonies from trying to come up with an English, male version of their vocal feel.” On earlier albums they had covered the Shirelles’ Boys and Baby It’s You, and McCartney said that his P.S. I Love You was inspired by the Shirelles’ Soldier Boy. The early appeal of the Beatles owed a great deal to the vocal arrangements they were mimicking. Bringing this vocal sound along with its pop chord progressions into a grittier and more masculine rock format was a key part of the Beatles distinctive sound and one of their earliest and most significant innovations.

Tell Me Why is an excellent example, with a great lead vocal from Lennon which has a little bite, a convincingly pleading emotional delivery and some striking falsetto peaks. Harmonies come in on alternating lines of the verse, and I think the ends of these phrases are particularly striking with Lennon’s voice engaging just the right level of grit on the last syllable. So good.

The song was recorded in half a morning as part of a session where they also recorded the much more subtle And I Love Her and If I Fell. Tell Me Why is all about energy, and it’s not hard to notice some scrappy timing on the backing vocals, but in all honesty this just adds to the feeling of exuberance.

The Beatles Bible

One of the more uptempo rockers on the A Hard Day’s Night album, ‘Tell Me Why’ was written by John Lennon for the concert sequence in the film.

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Wikipedia

"Tell Me Why" is a song by English rock band the Beatles from their album A Hard Day's Night. In North America, it was released on both the American version of A Hard Day's Night and the album Something New. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, it was writt…

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