"I Want to Hold Your Hand" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

With advance orders exceeding one million copies in the UK, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" would have gone straight to the top of the British record charts on its day of release had it not been blocked by the group's first million-seller "She Loves You", their previous UK single, which was having a resurgence of popularity following intense media coverage of the group.

[8] George Martin, however, had no such explicit recollections, believing that Capitol was left with no alternative but to release "I Want to Hold Your Hand" due to increasing demand for the group's product.

[10] Margaret Asher taught the oboe in the "small, rather stuffy music room" in the basement[10] where Lennon and McCartney sat at the piano and composed "I Want to Hold Your Hand".

The song's title was probably a variation of "I Wanna Be Your Man", which the Beatles had recently recorded at EMI Studios.

[13] Reminiscent of Tin Pan Alley and Brill Building techniques and an example of modified 32-bar form,[14] "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is written on a two-bridge model, with only an intervening verse to connect them.

The song is in the key of G major and lyrically opens two beats early with "Oh yeah, I'll tell you something" with a D-B, B-D melody note drop and rise over an I (G) chord.

[citation needed] In the United Kingdom, "She Loves You" (released in August) shot back to the number-one position in November following blanket media coverage of the Beatles (described as Beatlemania).

Mark Lewisohn later wrote: "'She Loves You' had already sold an industry-boggling three-quarters of a million before these fresh converts were pushing it into seven figures.

And at this very moment, just four weeks before Christmas, with everyone connected to the music and relevant retail industries already lying prone in paroxysms of unimaginable delight, EMI pulled the trigger and released 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'.

"[23] On 29 November 1963, Parlophone Records released "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the UK, with "This Boy" as the single's B-side.

Beatlemania was peaking at that time; during the same period, the Beatles set a record by occupying the top two positions on both the album and single charts in the UK.

This resulted in the relatively modest Vee-Jay and Swan labels releasing the group's earlier Parlophone counterparts in the US.

Seizing the opportunity, Epstein demanded US$40,000 from Capitol to promote the single (the most the Beatles had ever previously spent on an advertising campaign was US$5,000).

The single had actually been intended for release in mid-January 1964, coinciding with the planned appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

He asked the station's promotion director to get British Overseas Airways Corporation to ship in a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from Britain.

Capitol threatened to seek a court order banning airplay of "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which was already being spread by James to a couple of DJs in Chicago and St. Louis.

James and WWDC ignored the threat, and Capitol concluded that they could take advantage of the publicity, releasing the single two weeks ahead of schedule on 26 December.

The demand so overloaded Capitol that it contracted part of the job of pressing copies off to Columbia Records and RCA.

I've Said It Again" by Bobby Vinton,[26] emulating the success of another British group, the Tornados with "Telstar", which topped the Billboard chart for three weeks in December 1962.

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" finally relinquished the number-one spot after seven weeks, succeeded by the song they had knocked off the top in Britain: "She Loves You".

[citation needed] The American single's front and back sleeves featured a photograph of the Beatles with Paul McCartney holding a cigarette.

[30][31] "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was also released in America on the album Meet the Beatles!, which altered the American charts by actually outselling the single.

I immediately knew that everything had changed"; he said that he and Mike Love had a meeting to discuss the challenge presented by the Beatles, as "For a while there, we felt really threatened.

[41]At the annual Ivor Novello Awards, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" finished second in the category "The 'A' Side of the Record Issued in 1963 Which Achieved the Highest Certified British Sales", behind "She Loves You".

In addition, the Recording Industry Association of America, the National Endowment for the Arts and Scholastic Press have named "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as one of the Songs of the Century.