Cover Story: Can’t Buy Me Love

It’s almost impossible to choose a Beatles song for Cover Story (we’ve been putting it off for three series). The band’s productivity in 1964 alone would give us ten good options. It was the year of their first - and second! - US tours, their one Australian tour, and the film A Hard Day’s Night. Can’t Buy Me Love inspired a wide and wild range of covers, so strap in with DOBBY and Vanessa Hughes for jazz, bossa nova, and raunchy madrigal takes on the classic. Every great song gets covered. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes badly, and sometimes by people who clearly should have known better.Cover Story, returning for its third series, hunts down the best, the worst, and the downright strange versions of classic songs, and asks the question: why does this version give us goosebumps while that one makes our skin crawl?Can’t Buy Me LoveBy Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon/McCartney.First performed by The BeatlesReleased as a single 1964Versions heard in the show:The Supremes - A Bit of Liverpool (Motown, 1964)Ella Fitzgerald - Hello, Dolly! (Universal, 1964)Stanley Turrentine - Mr. Natural (Blue Note, recorded 1964, released 1980)Peter Sellers - A Hard Day’s Night (recorded 1965, released 1993)Chet Atkins - Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles (RCA Victor, 1966)The King’s Singers - New Day (Warner Music, 1980)Blackstreet - Another Level (Interscope, 1996)Tahta Menezes - Relaxing Bossa Lounge 3 (Charm Music, 2009)Leo Sayer - Northern Songs (Edsel Records, 2022)Paul McCartney - Tripping the Live Fantastic (Parlophone, 1990)Catch up on every episode of Cover StoryTechnical production by Isabella TropianoThe show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra, and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country.