The Beatles, “Another Girl” from Help! (1965): Deep Beatles

One of the most memorable moments from the Beatles’ film Help!, the “Another Girl” sequence provides the template for the modern music video with its vivid colors, quick cuts, exotic locale, and hints of sex. Yet underneath the bouncy tempo and twanging lead guitar lies a darker meaning: instead of a straightforward love song, Paul McCartney penned a song filled with aggression and a cavalier attitude toward commitment. While he praises his new love, he derides his previous girlfriend and sums up his attitude in one line: “I ain’t no fool and I don’t take what I don’t want.”

In Barry Miles’ Many Years from Now, McCartney explains that he composed the song while on vacation in Tunisia. He wrote the lyrics and music in the bathroom of a private villa, due to its optimal acoustics. “Another Girl” was not released as a single, but McCartney resisted calling it merely album “filler.” “I think they were a bit more than that, and each one of them made it past the Beatles test,” McCartney told Miles. “We all had to like it. If anyone didn’t like one of our songs it was vetoed. It could be vetoed by one person. If Ringo said, ‘I don’t like that one,’ we wouldn’t do it — or we’d have to really persuade him.”