The astonishing creativity and impact of The Beatles on pop charts of the 1960s was not limited to the band’s own releases. In the US, UK, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand charts there were in fact more chart entries in the 1960s – an even 100 – with Lennon-McCartney (and Harrison) songs by non-Beatles than the 85 entries recorded by the group itself.
These ranged from straightforward cover versions to odd adaptations, but their success appears to be related to the underlying melodicism (catchiness) of the tunes and the market’s familiarity with the originals. Broadly speaking, the non-Beatle Beatle songs fall into three categories: songs that were written for other artists and never recorded by the Beatles themselves; opportunistic covers of Beatles album tracks that were never released as singles by the group; and re-interpretations of Beatles hits.
In the first group, as amazing as it is that the Lennon-McCartney partnership was able to produce dozens of songs a year for their own albums, they additionally “wrote to order” for other performers in the George Martin / EMI stable in the 1963-65 period. The UK hitmakers that benefited from this arrangement included Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, The Applejacks, Chad and Jeremy, The Fourmost, P.J. Proby, and Peter and Gordon. The latter’s worldwide chart-topper “A World Without Love” had the greatest success of them all.
Record producers in the Sixties would scour every new Beatles album for cover opportunities, and the group was so busy – and successful – with releasing their own singles every three months or so, inevitably there were great album tracks that they never had the opportunity to put out as singles. Various performers leapt into the breach and scored major hits with covers of album tracks. It is hard to remember that iconic and hugely popular songs like “Michelle” were never Beatles hit singles. This is where David and Jonathan (“Michelle”), Doug Parkinson (“Dear Prudence”), Marmalade (“Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da”, only released as a Beatles single in Australia and New Zealand) and The Silkie with “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” made their impact. In fact, there were two UK #1 hits in this category: The Overlanders with “Michelle” and Marmalade with “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da”. The Overlanders took their success overseas, hitting #1 in New Zealand and #2 in Australia with “Michelle”. It was that same song, this time by David and Jonathan, that became the only Beatles cover version to make #1 in Canada’s RPM chart.
And then there were the straightforward cover versions and adaptations by lounge singers, soul shouters, wannabe pop groups, sophisticated crooners, and wild rockers. Relatively few of these became major hits, because the originals had already made their impact. But in the US some of the more soulful versions were successful, such as Aretha Franklin’s “Eleanor Rigby” (#5 R&B), Ray Charles’ version of “Yesterday” (#8 R&B), The Vontastics’ take on “Day Tripper” (#7 R&B), and Wilson Pickett’s powerful cover of “Hey Jude” (#23 pop, #13 R&B).
As it turns out, the only US pop Beatles cover to make the Top Ten was the samba-fied version of “Fool on the Hill” by Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66; it also made #7 in Canada.
Of the 100 non-Beatle Beatle charting singles in the 1960s, the most common were “Michelle” and “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” at five each. Four non-Beatle versions of “Yesterday” charted, while there were three takes each on “Here, There, and Everywhere”, “With A Little Help From My Friends”, and “Day Tripper”. It is perhaps worth noting that the most-covered tunes are the “prettier” Paul McCartney pop songs in the Beatles catalogue.
Then there is a special category for Beatle-adjacent singles such as “Badge” by Cream (co-written by George Harrison) and the Plastic Ono Band (i.e. John Lennon)’s hits.
The embedded spreadsheet extracts all of the non-Beatle Beatle songs from this site’s master compilation of pop charts of the 1960s.