From Me To You / Thank You Girl

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From Wikipedia:

UK release

[…] “From Me to You” was the first Beatles song to reach number one in Britain and is widely considered to be their first chart-topping song, for although “Please Please Me” reached the summit on almost every chart, it was only number two on Record Retailer’s chart, generally considered to be the most authoritative for the time. “From Me to You” would be the first of eleven consecutive British number one singles by the Beatles.

“From Me to You” replaced Gerry and the Pacemakers’ “How Do You Do It“, a song that had been offered to the Beatles (and even recorded by them, though it remained officially unreleased until 1995) but ultimately rejected by them in favour of “Love Me Do“. Gerry & The Pacemakers, who also hailed from Liverpool, were very much rivals of the Beatles in their early days—Gerry and the Pacemakers attained the first number one (“How Do You Do It“) before the Beatles, and also claimed their second and third number ones before the Beatles did, slowly losing steam afterwards as Beatlemania launched and the Beatles dominated music worldwide in 1964.

A true indication of how successful the Beatles became thanks to “From Me to You” (though it would soon be overshadowed by “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand“) was expressed by McCartney: “The first time I thought we’d really made it, was when I was lying in bed one morning, and I heard a milkman whistling ‘From Me to You’. Actually, I’m sure that I once heard a bird whistling it as well. I swear I did!”

First US release

When it released “Please Please Me” in the United States, Vee-Jay Records signed a licensing agreement giving it the right of first refusal on Beatles records for five years. Despite the failure of “Please Please Me” to catch on, Vee-Jay chose to release “From Me to You“; as a result, it was never turned down by Capitol, because it was never offered to them. “From Me to You” was released on Vee-Jay 522, with “Thank You Girl” on the B-side, on 27 May 1963. Even though Cash Box magazine called it a “Pick of the Week” when it was released, it initially failed even more miserably than its predecessor; through the end of June, “From Me to You” sold fewer than 4,000 copies and had failed to chart anywhere.

When Del Shannon released a cover version of “From Me to You” on Bigtop Records in June, Vee-Jay tried to stimulate more interest in the original, both by placing magazine ads and by sending out additional promotional copies of the 45 stamped with the words “The Original Hit“. But the biggest boost to the Beatles’ version came from Dick Biondi, who had played “Please Please Me” on WLS in Chicago. Biondi was fired by WLS in May and relocated to KRLA 1110 in Los Angeles in June. He was able to convince his new employer to add “From Me to You” to its playlist, and it entered KRLA’s “Tune-Dex” on 14 July, spending six weeks on the chart and peaking at 32 on 11 August.

Because of the airplay, and resulting sales, in Los Angeles, “From Me to You” made the “Bubbling Under” portion of the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, peaking at number 116 on 10 August, the same time the single peaked in Los Angeles. It was the first time the Beatles appeared on a national chart in the United States. The late attention in Los Angeles spurred sales of the 45; in the end, the original edition of “From Me to You” sold approximately 22,000 copies, roughly three times as many as “Please Please Me” had.

Second US release

Vee-Jay chose to couple “From Me to You” with “Please Please Me” when it re-released the single on 30 January 1964, shortly after film of the Beatles had appeared on The Jack Paar Program, a prime-time television show. Had Vee-Jay known how all-encompassing Beatlemania would become, it likely would have saved “From Me to You” for use as an A-side, the way it did with “Twist and Shout” and “Do You Want to Know a Secret“. But even as a B-side, “From Me to You” entered the Billboard charts on 7 March and peaked at number 41. The double-sided hit sold approximately 1.1 million copies in 1964. […]

Last updated on February 10, 2016