Today’s Song of the Day Challenge theme is “A song from your childhood” and my pick is “She Loves You” by The Beatles. It ranks among their greatest songs, and is one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs.

Anyone who was a kid or teenager in the early to mid 1960s remembers the first time they heard a song by The Beatles. They started out playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany in 1960, and in October 1962, their first single “Love Me Do” was released in the UK. “She Loves You” was released in the UK in August 1963, where it became the best-selling single of 1963, and remains to this day the top-selling Beatles single ever in the UK.

Because of contract disputes with their American label Vee-Jay Records, “She Loves You” ended up being released in the U.S. by Swan Records in September 1963. Shockingly, it sold only around 1,000 copies and failed to chart. But after the meteoric success of the Capitol Records release of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” launched the so-called “British Invasion” of the American music scene at the end of 1963, “She Loves You” finally entered the Billboard chart in late January 1964, and spent four weeks at #2 behind “I Want to Hold Your Hand” before replacing it at #1 that March.

It’s such a joyful and exhilarating song that resonates with young and old alike. The lyrics are from the perspective of a go-between, who tells a friend that his estranged girlfriend still loves him, and that he needs to apologize to make things right with her:

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

You think you’ve lost your love
Well, I saw her yesterday
It’s you she’s thinking of
And she told me what to say

She says she loves you
And you know that can’t be bad
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad

She said you hurt her so
She almost lost her mind
But now she says she knows
You’re not the hurting kind

She says she loves you
And you know that can’t be bad
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad, ooh

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
And with a love like that
You know you should be glad

You know it’s up to you
I think it’s only fair
Pride can hurt you too
Apologize to her

Because she loves you
And you know that can’t be bad
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad, ooh

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
With a love like that
You know you should be glad
With a love like that
You know you should be glad
With a love like that
You know you should be glad
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah