Let's do it!

do it!

You gotta beat the clock!

Welcome to Hit Party, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from

coast to coast. I'm Chris Malamphet chart analyst pop critic and writer of

Slate's Why is the song Number One series?

On today's show, on, on,

on, okay, on, okay,

on, 55 years ago this summer in late June 1964. The number one song on Billboard's Hot 100 was a

Lenin McCartney composition, but the song wasn't by the Beatles. It was a song penned by Paul McCartney and recorded by a

previously unknown British duo, one of whom was Paul's would-be brother-in-law.

Please lock me away

and don't allow the day here inside.

A little over a decade later in January 1975 the top song in America was by a

superstar who had an affinity for large glasses and feather boas. This superstar happened to be very good friends

with former Beatle, John Lennon. And the Lennon McCartney song that he took to number one was a song that his new pal John had written eight years earlier. Six more years after that in June 1981, the Hot 100's number one song also

sported Lenin McCartney songwriting credits. Only neither man had anything to do with this hit. It was a

disco medley of cover songs by a collection of Dutch studio musicians who were

trying to sound like the Beatles. That I would love everything that you do and I do

Believe it or not these three singles are the only non-Beatles, Lenin McCartney compositions

ever to top the Billboard Hot 100. The fact that all three are curios, even the one by Elton Jean is a bit quirky,

tells us something about the singular place the Fab Four's catalogue holds in the public imagination.

...