TL;DR:
- Katy Perry’s recorded The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” in an acoustic style.
- The vocals on her cover sound better than John Lennon’s on the original “All You Need Is Love.”
- The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” was a No. 1 single for one week.
The Beatles‘ “All You Need Is Love” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, Katy Perry’s “All You Need Is Love” sounds a lot better. Despite this, Perry’s cover isn’t perfect.
Katy Perry’s cover of The Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’ has superior vocals
The Beatles were musical geniuses, giving us classic album after classic album and classic song after classic song. Perry isn’t as highly regarded by critics, but she has given the world great pop songs such as “California Gurls,” “Teenage Dream,” and “Waking Up in Vegas.” The two acts intersected through the song “All You Need Is Love.”
The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” has an unusual waltz-like tempo. It lacks a solid Beatles hook. Perry’s cover is more straightforward, missing any of The Beatles’ wobbly beats. The mixing of John Lennon’s vocals on the original song is unusual and harsh on the ears. Meanwhile, Perry gave fans a nice, clean vocal.
Perry’s cover isn’t her best work. At best, it’s a decent coffee shop acoustic song. It’s still a lot better than The Beatles’ highly overrated hit.
Paul McCartney connected the lyrics of The Beatles’ song to 1960s free love
“All You Need Is Love” seems to advocate for love in the Christlike sense. In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul seems to relate the song’s title to the sexual revolution. “My dad used to say to me, ‘I had to worry about syphilis, gonorrhea,’” Paul recalled. “I’d say ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about that now.’ He’d say, ‘I had to worry about getting girls pregnant.’ I said, ‘They’re on the pill.’”
“It seemed to me that the whole period when I was there in the hunting game, all the conditions became spectacularly right!” he added. “For all our generation it became, “God, there are girls running round in miniskirts, who don’t mind sleeping with people;’ in fact, at one point it was sort of strange not to.”
Paul compared himself to a biblical prophet. “And to me now I always use the image of Moses opening up the waters,” he said. “The minute we’d done with it, he closed ’em back again. I certainly wouldn’t envy anyone out there now. So the attitudes were ‘dolly birds, miniskirts, free love, all you need is love.’”
How the original ‘All You Need Is Love’ performed on the charts in the United States
The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a single week. It remained on the chart for 11 weeks. The tune appeared on the LP version of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack. That album topped the Billboard 200 for eight weeks and lasted on the chart for 93 weeks in total.
The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” was a hit even though Perry’s version is better.
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