A Hard Day's Night song: Encyclopedia II - A Hard Day's Night song - The release

A Hard Day's Night song - The release

"A Hard Day's Night" was first released to the United States, coming out on June 13, 1964 on the album A Hard Day's Night, the soundtrack to the film, and released by United Artists. The album was a hit, selling a million copies in just four days.

The United Kingdom first heard "A Hard Day's Night" when it was released there on July 10, 1964, both on the album A Hard Day's Night, and as a single, backed with "Things We Said Today" on the B-side. Both the album and single were released by Parlophone Records. The album proceeded to sell 1.5 million copies within a fortnight of its release. The single began charting on July 18, 1964, a week later ousting the Rolling Stones' "It's All Over Now" from the top spot on the British charts on July 25, 1964, coincidentally the day when both the American and British albums too hit the peak of their respective charts. The single stayed on top for three weeks, and lasted another nine weeks in the charts afterwards.

America first saw the single of "A Hard Day's Night" on July 13, 1964, featuring "I Should Have Known Better" on the B-side, and released by Capitol Records. Capitol had been in a quandary about cashing in on the success of the movie A Hard Day's Night, as United Artists held the publishing rights for the soundtrack (thus owning the rights to release the album of the same title). However, there was nothing preventing Capitol from releasing the songs in other forms, leading to six out of the seven songs from the movie's soundtrack coming out on singles.

The American single began its 13-week chart run on five days after release, and on August 1 started a two-week long run at the top, setting a new record—nobody before had ever held the number one position on both the album and singles charts in the United Kingdom and the United States at the same time. The Beatles were the first to do so, and continued to be the only ones who had done this until 1970 when Simon and Garfunkel achieved the same feat with their album Bridge Over Troubled Water and its title track. "A Hard Day's Night" went on to sell one million copies in America within just over five weeks.

After the Beatles had performed on The Ed Sullivan Show when they first came to America in early 1964, some American critics had dismissed them as one-hit wonders. "A Hard Day's Night" proved them wrong, as it only strengthened the Beatles' dominance of the world music scene in 1964. They would continue to feature prominently for the next six years until their disbanding in 1970.

In 1965, "A Hard Day's Night" won the Beatles the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The release", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki