"And I Love Her" is a song recorded by The Beatles, written mainly by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon/McCartney, and is the fifth track on their third album, A Hard Day's Night. It was released 20 July 1964 with "If I Fell" as a single by Capitol Records in the United States, reaching #12 in Billboard.
The Beatles performed "And I Love Her" just once outside of Abbey Road Studios. On 14 July 1964 they played it for an edition of the BBC's Top Gear radio show, which was broadcast two days later.
This song was one of the first ballads with a title that starts in mid-sentence. Paul McCartney was pleased with himself that he came up with this idea.
The song was written mainly by McCartney, though John Lennon claimed in an interview with Playboy that his major contribution was the "middle eight" section ("A love like ours/Could never die/As long as I/Have you near me").
Beatles publisher Dick James lends support to this claim, saying that the middle eight was added during recording at the suggestion of producer George Martin (an early take of the song was released on Anthology 1 in 1995, and the middle eight had not yet been added). According to James, Lennon called for a break and "within half an hour [Lennon and McCartney] wrote...a very constructive middle to a very commercial song."
