The recordings are said to be from 1963, not long after The Beatles’ Jan. 1, 1962, audition for Decca Records.
Hang on to your Beatle wigs! Two “new” early Beatles recordings have surfaced, a solo acoustic demo of Paul McCartney’s self-penned “Love of the Loved,” and the first recording of Lennon-McCartney’s “Misery.”
Both turned up on YouTube on Dec. 10, 2025, apparently having been taken from one of the latest in a seemingly endless series of Beatles bootleg albums. Scroll down to the bottom of this article to hear the two newly discovered tracks.
“Love of the Loved” previously existed only on the legendarily shaky Beatles audition for Decca Records, which they famously failed, from Jan. 1, 1962. The newly surfaced demo was auctioned in 1991 by Christie’s, but has never appeared until now.
The version of “Misery,” purportedly from a Jan. 30-31, 1963, rehearsal at an empty Cavern Club (the Beatles’ early concert stronghold), was long reported to exist. A snippet of it was played by Beatles author Mark Lewisohn during his lecture tours, but this is the first appearance of the full song.
Check out these rare Beatles photos, taken by Mike McCartney at the Cavern in January 1963.
It’s yet another dramatic and significant find in the group’s legacy, the most recent major discovery having probably been the group’s full concert at the Stowe School For Boys of April 4, 1963.
In the Decca audition, the group (with Pete Best on anemically recorded drums), assay “Love of the Loved” with McCartney doing a deep, quasi-Elvis voice. The newly discovered demo features a clear, “normal” McCartney vocal, backed with acoustic guitars presumably played by McCartney plus John Lennon or George Harrison (or all three). The demo is believed to have been done specifically for popular Liverpool chanteuse and Beatles’ friend Cilla Black, who released it in October 1963.
Listen to Cilla Black’s version
With arrangement help from McCartney, produced by George Martin, Black’s version of “Love of the Loved” peaked at #35 on the U.K. singles chart in October 1963. Yet the song actually dated to the first half of 1959, according to Lewisohn, written during a night-time walk home, in honor of McCartney’s then-girlfriend, Dot Rhone.
“It was one of those very early songs of mine I’d written up in Liverpool,” McCartney remembered decades later. “We performed it at our audition for Decca when they unwisely passed us up. We played the song live a few times too but didn’t ever properly record it, so the song was sitting around waiting for a home.”
Related: That classic video of the Beatles at the Cavern
“Misery,” with full band including Ringo Starr, had been written just days prior to the newly found recording, which features different lyrics, including: “The world is treating me bad, misery/I’m the kind of girl/who used to love the world/The world is treating me bad, misery…” It was reportedly written as a request by pop star Helen Shapiro, who toured with the Beatles at the time, but she turned it down and it was released instead by one Kenny Lynch (it failed to chart).
Listen to Kenny Lynch’s “Misery”
Renowned authority Lewisohn, author of the exhaustive biography The Beatles: Tune In [available here], reported that Lennon and McCartney began work on “Misery” Jan. 26, 1963, likely backstage before a performance at the King’s Hall, Stoke-on-Trent. It was completed a day or two later at McCartney’s Forthlin Road home. Said McCartney at the time:, “We’ve called it ‘Misery,’ but it isn’t as slow as it sounds; it moves along at quite a pace, and we think Helen will make a pretty good job of it.”
Listen to “MIsery” as performed on the BBC
In separate interviews over the years, Lennon said “Misery” was more of a John song than a Paul song, “but it was written together.” McCartney’s take: “I don’t think either one of us dominated on that one, it was just a hacking job.”
The Beatles routinely gave songs they considered second-rate to other artists, many of whom, from Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas to the Rolling Stones, had hits with them. It’s hard to imagine “Misery,” now considered an early classic, and the inventive, unusual “Love of the Loved,” being thought of as second-rate.
Listen to the two newly discovered recordings
The advent of the two songs also underscores widespread fan criticism of the newly released The Beatles Anthology Vol. 4, which consists largely of bonus tracks from previously issued boxed set re-releases, or takes of songs that differ very little from official versions. It is well known among fans that there is a plethora of unreleased demos, outtakes, alternate versions and live recordings that could have made Anthology 4 a newsworthy release. An album of Beatles demos alone is considered long overdue.
“These two songs would have been a perfect fit for Anthology 4,” said Casey Piotrowski, longtime host of the syndicated Beatles Show radio program. “You know, every time we think we’ve heard the last undiscovered music from the Beatles, someone discovers more. Hank Williams died in 1953 and they were still putting out unreleased music as late as 2014. I think it’ll be the same with the Beatles. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of new music from them.”
[The 12-LP and 8-CD editions of the Beatles’ Anthology Collection are available in the U.S./worldwide here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here. Anthology 4 is available as a standalone 3-LP or 2-CD set in the U.S./worldwide here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here.]
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