The Beatles

No band changed popular music more than the Beatles. Formed in Liverpool in 1960 around John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the Fab Four went from clubs in Hamburg to the biggest act on earth in barely three years. In a recording career that lasted only about eight years they remade songwriting, the recording studio and pop culture itself. They are the best-selling music act of all time, with an estimated 600 million units sold.

From the Quarrymen to Hamburg

The band grew out of the Quarrymen, a skiffle group Lennon started as a teenager. McCartney joined in 1957, Harrison in 1958, and after a few names and several drummers the group became the Beatles in 1960. Long, punishing nights in Hamburg’s clubs turned them into a tight unit, and Ringo Starr completed the lineup in 1962. Manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin then shaped them into a recording act.

Beatlemania

Their first hits, “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me”, led quickly to a fan frenzy the press called Beatlemania. When they landed in the United States in 1964, they touched off the British Invasion and took over the American charts like nothing before. The film A Hard Day’s Night caught the moment that same year.

The studio years

Tired of touring through screaming crowds, the Beatles stopped performing live in 1966 and turned to the studio. The albums that followed, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album and Abbey Road, broke the rules of what a pop record could be, folding in classical strings, Indian instruments and studio experiments. Songs like “Yesterday” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” changed the craft.

The break-up and after

The Beatles split in 1970, and all four went on to solo careers. Lennon was murdered in 1980 and Harrison died in 2001, while McCartney and Starr remain active. The band holds the records for the most number-one singles and albums on the US charts, won eight Grammys, and entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

A catalogue that keeps living

The songs never stopped earning. Michael Jackson bought the publishing rights to the Beatles’ catalogue in 1985, a deal that shaped the music business for decades. In 2023 McCartney and Starr finished “Now and Then”, built from an old Lennon demo with modern audio restoration and billed as the last Beatles song. It won Best Rock Performance at the 2025 Grammys, more than fifty years after the band broke up.

Most loved songs

A spread across the catalogue. Each title opens through the in-site player.

From a singalong chorus to a ballad you have known your whole life, the odds are good a Beatles song lives somewhere in your memory. Type the line you remember into the search box above and you may find it leads back to them.