Help!

Help! is The Beatles' fifth studio album and the soundtrack to their second feature length film. The 14-track record includes 10 Lennon-McCartney numbers, 2 from George, and 2 covers (“Act Naturally” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”) – a steady improvement from the cover-padded Beatles For Sale.

Starting with the title song, the album offers moments of compositional and lyrically foreshadowing into a much more sophisticated and adventurous musical territory, which the group immediately began exploring with Rubber Soul.

Help!’s foray into emotional exploration is a product of both John’s growing infatuation with Bob Dylan and the mental/physical anguish accompanying his incessant dissatisfaction with The Beatles' unprecedented success.

In a 1980 interview with David Sheff, Lennon revealed a piece of his inner turmoil during this time period:

The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. I was eating and drinking like a pig and I was fat as a pig, dissatisfied with myself, and subconsciously I was crying for help…
When Help! came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it’s just a fast rock ‘n’ roll song. I didn’t realise it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. So it was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: he – I – is very fat, very insecure, and he’s completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was.

The “fat” version of Lennon in 1965