Song of the Day: I Saw Her Standing There (Please Please Me, 1963)

One of Paul's most famous and lasting Beatles song, "I Saw Her Standing There" is a fun, slightly raunchy Cavern Club favorite. The influence of the late-1950s rock scene can be seen in this song, with a heavy guitar solo and a ridiculously fast-paced bass line that drives the piece into a frenzy of screaming and stomping. "I Saw Her Standing There" is one of the earliest songs that Paul and John worked on together, though most of the credit goes to Paul. The original opening lyrics, "Well she was just seventeen, never been a beauty queen," were changed to the more suggestive lyrics "Well she was just seventeen, you know what I mean," at the request of John, leaving raised eyebrows for decades, most noticeably when Paul sings the song live now (he's 71 years old!). This is one of my favorite Beatles songs, and one of theirs as well, as you can see in the boy's excitement in this live performance in Sweden in 1963.