Paul McCartney wrote "And I Love Her" in the George V hotel in Paris while the Beatles were performing a series of shows at the Olympia Theater in January 1964. In John Lennon's words, "it was his first 'Yesterday,'" his first big ballad. The covers of "A Taste of Honey" on Please Please Me and "Till There Was You" on With The Beatles had been McCartney's ballads on the first two Beatles' LPs, but "And I Love Her" was all his own. It is an exquisitely composed song with an arching, yearning melody over minor plagal cadences in the verse, a hopefully rising melody over a smooth perfect cadence to the tonic in the chorus and mysterious melodic move to the mediant minor for bridge. Like "Till There Was You," "And I Love Her" has nylon-stringed acoustic guitar from George Harrison for the instrumental verse, and, like so many big band arrangements, it modulates up a half-step for the closing half of the song. The final chord D major resolves both the opening verses in E minor and the closing verses in F major. "And I Love Her" was first released as the third song on the first side of A Hard Day's Night in July 1964.

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