Love Me Do by The Beatles – ***; by Paul McCartney - **; by Ringo Starr - **

First released: 1962

This is the song that most people heard first from The Beatles, at least in England. For me, I was already a Beatles fan and the first time I heard the track was on the red "1962-1966" compilation from 1973. I was shocked as to what I heard. It was so primitive to everything else on the album. Later on, I grew to love this tune. There are two different “official” Beatles versions, a single version with Ringo on drums and an album version that is on "Please Please Me" and all subsequent single versions from 1963 on with Ringo on tambourine. Eventually, the album version became the preferred version and the single version got lost in the shuffle until 1982 when the difference in the two tracks was pointed out. The original version finally made it onto CD on the "Past Masters, Volume One" album in 1988. It's also on 2000's "1". Yet another version (the EMI audition) appears on "Anthology 1" in 1995. A 1963 radio version appears on 1994's "Live at the BBC".

This is one of a couple Beatles tracks that Paul McCartney actually owns the publishing rights to (read “no Michael Jackson”) and so he decided to combine this with the other track ("PS I Love You") to make a new version called "PS Love Me Do". The studio version of that track only appeared on the Japanese CD of "Flowers in the Dirt". A live version of "PS Love Me Do" appeared as a b-side to the "Birthday" CD single.

Even Ringo forgot that he had played on the original Beatles single version and so he cut a new version of the song for his 1998 "Vertical Man" album to set the record straight that he could have drummed originally. Well, you did buddy. Ringo’s version isn’t too bad, but kind of unnecessary. A live version by Ringo appears on 1998’s "VH1 Storytellers".