Sixty-one years after releasing their first single, “Love Me Do,” the Beatles have released their last. Inside the story of “Love Me Do” to “Now and Then” is the love story of John Lennon and Paul McCartney — which is our story, too. Beatles songs still speak to us so directly because they are vehicles for the transmission of feelings too powerful for normal speech. They gained their emotional education from music, especially the music of Black artists like Smokey Robinson, Arthur Alexander and the Shirelles. Almost everything they felt — and they felt a lot — was poured into music, including their feelings about each other.

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Persons: “, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lennon, McCartney, Smokey Robinson, Arthur Alexander Organizations: Beatles