A Hard Day’s Night is the only Beatles album where all of the songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It is also the first Beatles album to contain only original compositions, and no cover songs. A Hard Day’s Night was released on July 10, 1964, as the soundtrack to the Beatles’ film of the same name.
Most of the band’s earlier albums contain at least a few covers, and most of their albums have at least one George Harrison composition, but A Hard Day’s Night had neither. Harrison does get to sing lead vocals on the Lennon/McCartney penned “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You”.
A Hard Day’s Night is one of three Beatles albums that do not feature Ringo Starr on vocals on at least one track (Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be are the others). But Starr is credited with the accidental creation of the movie/album’s title. During an interview with Playboy magazine in 1980, John Lennon said: “I was going home in the car and Dick Lester [director of the movie] suggested the title, ‘Hard Day’s Night’ from something Ringo had said. I had used it in ‘In His Own Write’, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny… just said it. So Dick Lester said, ‘We are going to use that title.’”
