Twist and Shout

Twist and Shout was the Beatles' first UK extended play, issued on Parlophone on 12 July 1963. It gathers four tracks produced by George Martin that had already appeared on their debut album, Please Please Me, and it was rushed out to satisfy public demand for more of the band.

The demand was real. The EP spent twenty-one weeks at the top of the UK EP chart, making it the best-selling EP in Britain up to that point, and it did well enough to register on the NME Singles Chart, where it reached number four. The sleeve is memorable too: a photograph of the Beatles leaping in a London bombsite, which The Telegraph has called one of the key images of the 1960s. It's a neat snapshot of the band's early momentum.