The Beatles BibleA childlike singalong written in the music hall tradition, ‘All Together Now’ was written in the studio for the Yellow Submarine film.
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WikipediaThis is a playground style sing-along chant which fills a slot in the Yellow Submarine movie. Apparently based on a “Simon Says”-style party piece that McCartney used to sing to entertain the kids at family events.
The Beatles clearly understood the connection that can be created with a catchy chant which encourages people to join in. The na-na-na-na outro of Hey Jude being the clearest example. All You Need is Love is another. John Lennon and Yoko Ono later made use of this approach for protest songs “Give Peace A Chance” and “Merry Christmas (War Is Over)”. Perhaps the “Yeah, yeah, yeah” chorus of She Loves You was an early prototype.
It’s also noticeable that several Beatles songs were aimed at children or at least family audiences – I certainly remember Yellow Submarine, Octopus’s Garden, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da and this one from my childhood. It was part of the Beatles success that they appealed across different generations. Whether in the context of “kids songs” or “granny music”, the accessible family friendly face could sometimes be in tension with their urge to be taken seriously either as artists or “cool rockstars”. But IMO it is pretty cool and artistic to be authentic and able to create truly popular music that transcends a narrow target audience. It’s something the Beatles did differently.
Growing up people sometimes argued that the Rolling Stones were cooler and more transgressive. I don’t think being rebellious and transgressive is particularly cool in itself. The Beatles could do that when they wanted to, but they could also break boundaries between genres, with new harmonies, rhythms, lyrical subject matter, artistic concepts and with new multi-generational audiences too.