Line #109 Music/Help


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5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/help_album_cover_6461.jpg]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:''"Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away..."'']]
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8	''Help!'' is the fifth studio album by Music/TheBeatles, released in 1965. Like their earlier album ''Music/AHardDaysNight'', it served as a sort of soundtrack to [[Film/{{Help}} the movie of the same name]]. It would also be their final studio album until ''Music/LetItBe'' to feature any covers.
9
10	Interestingly, the album cover with the Beatles using flag semaphore to spell "HELP" is inaccurate; it instead spells "NUJV". According to cover photographer Robert Freeman, this inaccuracy was intentional as it turned out that the "HELP" arrangement didn't look good enough, and the cover resulted from subsequent improvisation. On the US version of the album, it was changed to "NVUJ".
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12	The album would spawn hits such as "Help!", "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", "Ticket to Ride", and "Yesterday", one of the most recorded songs of all time.[[note]]Literature/GuinnessWorldRecords once claimed it to be the single most recorded song, with upwards of 2,000 versions, but Website/{{Wikipedia}} points out that there are at least 20,000 known versions of [[Theatre/PorgyAndBess "Summertime"]], and no doubt there are other Tin Pan Alley standards that meet or exceed that number. [[Music/MerryChristmas "White Christmas"]] is probably a strong contender for the title.[[/note]]
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14	A notable point of trivia regarding this album is that footage of the Beatles performing "Ticket to Ride" was included in the 1965 ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E8TheChase "The Chase"]], during a sequence at the beginning of the story in which the Doctor and his companions use a "Time-Space Visualiser" to view multiple anecdotal events from Earth's past, including the Fab Four on ''Series/TopOfThePops''. Incidentally, the footage included in the former show is the only surviving visual record that the Beatles were ever on the latter; the BBC had a policy of wiping old episodes for reuse due to a combination of limited storage space, high prices of new magnetic tape reels, and high re-airing fees imposed by acting unions at the time, and both ''Top of the Pops'' and ''Doctor Who'' fell victim to this practice. However, when the BBC abandoned systemic wiping for ''Doctor Who'' in 1974 and for all of their programmes altogether in 1978, staff scrambled to recover lost episodes of ''Doctor Who''; "The Chase" was one serial that managed to be recovered in its entirety, and with it the only remaining footage of the Beatles on ''Top of the Pops''. Ah, the perils of archiving.
15	----
16
17	!! Tracklist (Standard Version):
18
19	[[AC:Side One]]
20	# "Help!"
21	# "The Night Before"
22	# "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
23	# "I Need You"
24	# "Another Girl"
25	# "You're Going to Lose That Girl"
26	# "Ticket to Ride"
27
28	[[AC:Side Two]]
29	# "Act Naturally"
30	# "It's Only Love"
31	# "You Like Me Too Much"
32	# "Tell Me What You See"
33	# "I've Just Seen a Face"
34	# "Yesterday"
35	# "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"
36
37	----
38	!! Tracklist (US Version):
39
40	[[AC:Side One]]
41	# "Help!"
42	# "The Night Before"
43	# "From Me to You Fantasy"*
44	# "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
45	# "I Need You"
46	# "In the Tyrol"*
47
48	[[AC:Side Two]]
49	# "Another Girl"
50	# "Another Hard Day's Night"*
51	# "Ticket to Ride"
52	# "Medley: The Bitter End/You Can't Do That"*
53	# "You're Going to Lose That Girl"
54	# "The Chase"*
55
56	[=*=] From the film score by Ken Thorne
57
58	----
59	!!Principal Members:
60
61	* Music/GeorgeHarrison - lead and backing vocals, guitar
62	* Music/JohnLennon - lead and backing vocals, guitar, piano
63	* Music/PaulMcCartney - lead and backing vocals, bass, guitar, piano, güiro
64	* Music/RingoStarr - lead vocals, drums, percussion, tambourine, maracas, cowbell, bongos, claves, brushed snare
65
66	----
67	!! She's got a ticket to trope, and she don't care:
68	* AlternateAlbumCover: The original UK release features the Beatles in a WhiteVoidRoom, spelling out "NUJV" in semaphore. [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cd1094_5831.jpg The US version]] with an altered tracklist, meanwhile, shrinks down the band, rearranges the members so that they instead spell out "NVUJ", and sandwiches them between much larger versions of the band name and album title.
69	* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: As noted above, the Beatles are spelling out the gibberish "NUJV" on the cover because the photographer disliked the look of "HELP".
70	* BreakUpSong: "Yesterday" ("Why she had to go/ I don't know she wouldn't say") and "Ticket To Ride" ("The girl that's driving me mad is going away").
71	* CoverVersion: "Act Naturally" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" are covers of Music/BuckOwens and Larry Williams, respectively. Apart from a throwaway rendition of the "trad. arr." bawdy song "Maggie Mae" on ''Music/LetItBe'', these two, plus another Williams cover, "Bad Boy", recorded alongside "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", would be the last covers to feature on a Beatles record.[[note]]"Bad Boy" was released on Creator/CapitolRecords' ''Beatles VI'' album in America a couple months before the film came out, but [[LateExportForYou it didn't get issued in the UK]] until it was included on the GreatestHitsAlbum ''A Collection of Beatles Oldies'' in late 1966.[[/note]]
72	* CultSoundtrack: To the movie of the same name.
73	* DreamingOfThingsToCome: Music/PaulMcCartney dreamt the melody of "Yesterday" during his sleep. When he woke up he asked everyone whether they could remember who wrote it. As it turned out he had invented it himself and so he recorded it as a solo piece, without the rest of the band. It would become their most covered song.
74	** Another version of the story behind "Yesterday" has Paul playing it on the piano in Alma Cogan's flat in Kensington. He was sure it was an existing tune but couldn't recall where it came from. He may have been thinking of "Answer Me", a huge hit for both Frankie Laine and David Whitfield in the 1950s. There are certainly some similarities between the two songs. "Answer Me" contains the lines
75	---> ''She was mine yesterday''
76	---> ''I believed that love was here to stay''
77	---> ''Won't you tell me where I've gone astray''
78	---> ''Please answer me O Lord''
79	* FaceOnTheCover: The band is shown from a distance and in different clothing, but in an empty background that does not distract from the viewer looking at them.
80	%% * Getting Crap Past The Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.
81	* InTheStyleOf:
82	** "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" is basically John doing Music/BobDylan (with John himself saying he'd never have used the "clown" line/rhyme otherwise).
83	** "I've Just Seen A Face" is pure country.
84	* NewSoundAlbum: To an extent. There's the country-rock "Act Naturally", and the folkish "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away".
85	* NostalgiaFilter:
86	** "Help"
87	---> ''When I was younger, so much younger than today. I never needed anybody's help in any way''
88	** "Yesterday"
89	---> ''Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away''.
90	* TheOldestProfession: "Ticket to Ride" is about a girl getting her streetwalker license.
91	* OneWomanSong: "Dizzy Miss Lizzy".
92	* OneWordTitle: "Help!" and "Yesterday".
93	* ThePowerOfLove: "It's Only Love", "I Need You".
94	* RealLifeWritesThePlot: "Help!" was a summarization of Lennon's feelings about Beatlemania at that point.
95	* SillyLoveSongs: Just like the earlier albums most of the material here deals with love.
96	* StepUpToTheMicrophone: Ringo Starr sings lead on "Act Naturally", and George Harrison sings lead on "I Need You" and "You Like Me Too Much".
97	* SubduedSection: "Help!" has this at the end, when Lennon repeats the first verse.
98	* TitleTrack: "Help!".
99	* TrrrillingRrrs: On "It's Only Love":
100	--> ''Just the thought of you makes nighttime brrright''
101	* UrbanLegends: The album cover supposedly has the band mimicking the word "help" in semaphore sign language. This was originally the idea, but the photographer felt the movements they made didn't look as photogenic, so he allowed the band to strike other poses that looked better.
102	* WhiteVoidRoom: The Beatles stand in it on the album cover.

Context Music / Help