1966 Beatles No. 1 Was the First Hit They Made That Wasn't About Love
Sixty years ago today, the biggest band in the world did something it had never done on a No. 1 single. It stopped singing about love.
By 1966, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had spent years filling the charts with songs about holding hands and falling in love. Then McCartney's aunt asked him a question that stuck: why did he always write about love, and couldn't he write about something more interesting for a change. His response became the band's first No. 1 that was not a love song.
A Letter Set to Music
The result was "Paperback Writer," a song written as a letter from a struggling author to a publisher, with not a single line about romance in it.
The recording broke new ground too. McCartney's bass was deliberately boosted in the studio, with engineers using a loudspeaker as a makeshift microphone to give the low end far more punch than the band's earlier singles. The single was backed with the B-side "Rain."
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Still No. 1
Released in the US on May 30, the single reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 within weeks. At the top it bumped the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black," then briefly lost the spot to Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" before climbing back.
Six decades later, with McCartney still topping the charts and selling out stadiums, it stands as proof that even at the height of Beatlemania, the band kept changing the rules, including its own.
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This story was originally published May 30, 2026 at 9:56 AM.