A Beatles Journey: Can’t Buy Me Love

On the first week of April in 1964, and with the release of the single “Can’t Buy Me Love”, The Beatles broke old records, established new records, and made pop music history. As a matter of fact, they established a total of five records in April of 1964, which have not been broken yet and quite likely never will be.

1) “Can’t Buy Me Love” had the largest advance sale in the history of recorded music, with an international advance order of over two million copies.

2) “Can’t Buy Me Love” made the greatest leap to the Billboard #1 spot. In the history of Billboard’s Top 100, very few songs have managed to jump to the #1 position from outside the Top 20. The Beatles “Can’t Buy Me Love” was the first.

3) In December of 1956, Elvis Presley had nine concurrent singles on the Top 100 chart. On March 28 of 1964 The Beatles had ten… by April 4 – with the release of “Can’t But Me Love” – they had twelve.

4) “Can’t Buy Me Love” by The Beatles bumped, “She Loves You” by The Beatles from the #1 spot, which had previously bumped “I Want to Hold Your Hand” – also by The Beatles – from it’s #1 spot. Elvis Presley had done this twice in 1956, and it hasn’t been done three or more times since.

5) The week of April 4, 1964, The Beatles dominated the Top 5. No artist had ever done this before, and none have done it since.