I’ve Just Seen A Face-The Beatles

I’ve just seen a face is the fifth song on the B-Side of the Beatles 5th studio album ‘Help’. Specifically, in the USA it was released on the sixth album ‘Rubber Soul’. The song is one of my personal favorite Beatles songs which is why I have decided to write this E-book about it. In the following pages I will examine the background of the song, the lyrics, and share several interesting tidbits.

The song is a simple one with an up-tempo beat that just sweeps you away. The song was written by the legendary Lennon-McCartney duo and produced by George Martin, the man sometimes referred to as the ‘Fifth Beatle’. It was written well before its release on Help, during the time that the aforementioned duo were part of a Skiffle band named the Quarrymen.

I feel that this song, in its essence, is a form of Skiffle music, something McCartney himself alluded to by saying; “It was slightly country and western from my point of view… it was faster, though, it was a strange up-tempo thing. I was quite pleased with it.”

On to the lyrics. The song speaks of a person who sees the face of a girl, and instantly falls in love with her. In my opinion there are many similarities to the James Blunt song “You’re Beautiful” which I have attached on the next page. Both songs talk about someone falling in love with a girl that he doesn’t really know, yet somehow is drawn to her in an inexplicable way. Yet where James’ song is rather more negative, as the singer tells us that he didn’t have the courage to speak to her, here we get the feeling that they do get together, as seen in the first verse:

“I’ve just seen a face

I can’t forget the time or place
Where we just met
She’s just the girl for me
And I want all the world to see
We’ve met, mm-mm-mm-m’mm-mm:”. From the last line in the verse we can assume that the singer and ‘the face’ are now together.

We have talked about the simplicity of the lyrics, yet they also contain a deeper element that we have yet to discuss. They sound effortless but contain within them a complex sequence of cascading rhymes:

“I have never known
The like of this, I’ve been alone
And I have missed things
And kept out of sight
But other girls were never quite
Like this, di-di-di-di’n’di”.

I feel that this aspect helps the song sweep us along in its wonderful pace and beat. McCartney himself said “The lyric works; it keeps dragging you forward, it keeps pulling you to the next line, there’s an insistent quality to it that I liked”.

We learnt in the course, that one of the things that reinvented the Beatles from a regular cover group to the generational band we know today, was Paul learning bass guitar and then taking over as bass guitarist. Which is why it’s interesting to notice that this song does not have a bass, one of the very few Beatles songs that don’t. I feel that this gives the song a very acoustic and unique vibe, making it stand out from the other songs on the album.

It was covered by McCartney with his band Wings, in their 1976 tour, one of only five Beatles songs, something that shows how highly he rates it.