And I Love Her - Live At The BBC For "Top Gear" / 16th July, 1964

Paul McCartney wrote most of this song. In a 1984 interview with Playboy magazine, he stated, "It's just a love song; no, it wasn't for anyone." That was probably the chivalrous thing to do, as by then he was 15 years into his marriage to Linda. When he wrote the song, he was dating an actress named Jane Asher. For a while, they were the most popular couple in England. After they broke up in 1968, McCartney married Linda Eastman and Asher became a proficient author. She later started her own business called "Jane Asher Party Cakes." McCartney did write "We Can Work It Out" and "Here, There And Everywhere" about Asher.

This was one of the first pop songs with a title that starts in mid-sentence. Paul was inspired by songs such as Perry Como's "And I Love Her So."

Most of the songs on the album A Hard Days Night are John Lennon compositions. Lennon helped out with the middle part of this song, but it's mostly the work of McCartney. Structurally, the song is fairly conventional, with a clear melody in A+A+B+A system similar to popular music from the '30s that Irving Berlin wrote.