Whenever our junior school teacher felt she didn't have the full attention of the class, she used to slap her hand down on the top of her desk with a resounding smack that sharpened up our minds no end. The opening chord of 'A Hard Day's Night' has a similar effect; after the dropped catch of 'Can't Buy Me Love', it's an attention grabbing statement of intent that announced eyes were now back on the ball.*Though a thinly veiled whinge at how tough it was to be a star (and as custom written to order to soundtrack the already titled film the band were working on), 'A Hard Day's Night' glistens with the pristine sheen of the finest power pop. Lennon's bluesy wail and Starr's frenetic drumming stoke the fire in its engine room until it roars with a force; there's nothing flash or clever about any of this (just check out Ringo's dumb as they come cowbell on the bridge), but it does what it does well, shifting in a seamless weave from verse to bridge to verse to makes not very much sound consistently brand new. Or maybe The Beatles just made it look easy.
* This chord has been the source of much musicological musing over the years. Indeed a certain Professor Brown at Dalhousie University in Canada spent six months researching/analysing it, deducing that it wasn't just the sound of a single guitar. Apparently, "Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar". Well just fancy that.
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