The Beatles’ 5 Most Underrated Songs

As the biggest band in pop and rock music history, The Beatles have been the subject of countless hours and column inches dedicated to discussing their greatest songs, albums, and even movies and post-group releases. But alongside their array of chart-topping hits, the band’s output was so great that their complete catalogue contains several hundred less well-known, but no less impactful and meaningful, tracks.

Over the years, critics and fans alike have thrown forward dozens of these underrated songs as their favorites—five choice examples of which are listed here.

“THE WORD”
“SHE’S LEAVING HOME”
“I’LL FOLLOW THE SUN”
“THE END”
“YOU KNOW MY NAME (LOOK UP THE NUMBER)”

“THE WORD”

Track six on the Beatles’ sixth album Rubber Soul, John Lennon’s “The Word” marks a turning point between the band’s earlier pop and rock sound and a shift towards a more experimental, psychedelic sound and more expressionistic lyrics. Here, they write about love in an overtly philosophical way for the first time.

According to Paul McCartney, that shift in “The Word” was at least in part due to the band’s use of marijuana during the songwriting process here—but there was a musical driving force behind this track too, besides a psychoactive one. As McCartney also later explained, the band was keen to write a song using a melody based around a single repeated note, “like [Little Richard’s] Long Tall Sally,” adding that “We got near it with ‘The Word.’”

“SHE’S LEAVING HOME”

Released on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, “She’s Leaving Home” showcases a band willing to experiment with both their sound, their lyrics, their arrangements, and their storytelling. Co-written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, the three-and-a-half-minute song—which tells the story of a young girl who runs away from her stifling family home, leaving her parents devastated—is one of only a few in the band’s catalogue in which none of the members plays a single instrument: instead, the backing is entirely performed by a string section.

The band’s usual producer and arranger, George Martin, wasn’t available at the time, but as McCartney was in the midst of a creative whirlwind and desperately wanted to crack on with the recording as soon as possible, he approached legendary English producer Mike Leander to arrange the strings instead. Martin, who was reportedly unhappy with being (albeit only temporarily) sidelined, nonetheless conducted the strings on his return to the studio. McCartney later admitted “She’s Leaving Home” was “my kind of ballad,” as well as one of his own daughter’s favorite Beatles tracks. Not a bad pedigree all around, really.

“I’LL FOLLOW THE SUN”

Released in the UK on Beatles for Sale in 1964, and on Beatles ’65 the following year in the US, I’ll Follow the Sun was actually written by Paul McCartney back in 1959 when he was just 16 years old, “in my front parlour in Forthlin Road” as he later recalled.

Despite his youth, the song is a quintessential Beatles ballad with a delicate and beautiful “Yesterday”-like melody, and a simple yet exquisite arrangement. And, in contrast to the other rockier sounds of the band’s early years (and the other songs on the same album), “I’ll Follow the Sun” hints at the acoustic sound and more melancholic lyrics the band would explore in their later years.

“THE END”

The last song the Beatles ever recorded at the same time, The End brings 1969’s Abbey Road to an appropriate conclusion—and rather neatly, is also the only song to feature a solo by all four band members (including Ringo Starr’s only Beatles solo). The song is a heady mix of most of the Beatles’ trademark sounds, including a driving guitar riff, swirling strings, a tinkling repeated piano chord, and dreamy harmonies, all topped off with one of their most exquisite closing lyrics: “And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make.”

“YOU KNOW MY NAME (LOOK UP THE NUMBER)”

When it comes to underrated Beatles songs, who could argue with Paul McCartney himself? In an interview with writer Mark Lewisohn in 1988 for his seminal guide, Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, McCartney called the bizarre deep-cut You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) “probably my favourite Beatles track.” Released as the B-side to Let It Be in 1970 and never included on one of the band’s albums, the track was initially conceived of by John Lennon after he happened to glance at a phone directory while writing it.

The song has few actual lyrics other than the title, plays like a music hall comedy track, and is written in a Latin-influenced mambo style that features a Brian Jones saxophone solo—but despite its unusual structure, composition, and instrumentation, McCartney was sold. “I mean, what would you do if a guy like John Lennon turned up at the studio and said, ‘I’ve got a new song,’” he told Lewisohn. “I said, ‘What’s the words?’ and he replied, ‘You know my name look up the number.’ I asked, ‘What’s the rest of it?’ ‘No, no other words, those are the words. And I want to do it like a mantra!’”