The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs: #97 “All I've Got to Do"

This song epitomizes a very specific time in my life when I developed a more full appreciation and comprehension of the Beatles catalog. About 20 years ago, while in college, was when I became a full blown CD collector. It was then that owning Beatles music A to Z was a priority, something I never had in a previous format, cassettes or vinyl. Only problem in those days was that it was not cheap to get the band’s CDs, as they were ALWAYS full price, never discounted, and close to impossible to find in a second-hand market. In my last full year at school, I hit the mother lode at a local used CD store and got every Beatles CD I’d yet to own (some for the first time ever), finally getting what was at the time all American versions of the albums from beginning to end.

If there was one CD then that served as a revelation by owning it proper for the first time, it was With the Beatles.
Having always been fascinated with how this one band managed so much versatility within the short confines of a lone decade, I’d previously dismissed this LP as a “Mop Top throwaway,” crammed with the early hits that I could always count on hearing on the oldies radio station.

But thanks to a more mature perspective (with a dash of semi-regular pot and LSD use that prompted me to perceive the nuances in their music I’d neglected for years), I came to accept With the Beatles as my favorite album of the band’s tenure prior to their highly regarded trajectory from Help! to Revolver, and “All I’ve Got to Do” is my top choice from it.

John Lennon back then typically left the heartfelt romantic ballads to Paul McCartney, but it doesn’t mean he lagged in the occasional conceit in that area. I think the vocal work he displays here is some of his best ever with the band, a harbinger of the singing found later in “You’re Going to Lose That Girl,” “Don’t Let Me Down” and “I Want You.” Apparently he was going for a Smokey Robinson vibe with “All I’ve Got to Do,” and I’d say he did the Motown legend and his band, the Miracles, proud.