“Why (Can’t You Love Me Again)” is a track written by Bill Crompton and Tony Sheridan, recorded in Hamburg by Sheridan with backing from The Beat Brothers (The Beatles, consisting of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Best). The broken-hearted plea is sung by Sheridan with vocals so cavernous the band’s contributions are almost completely overshadowed, although the easygoing arrangement wouldn’t have been much of a showcase for them either way. The Beatles seem to offer backing vocals, but again, without the precision in either performance or engineering that they brought to their later recordings. Musically it sounds like something Elvis might have knocked out as album filler, but Sheridan was no Elvis, and The Beatles weren’t quite The Beatles yet. This fact, however, didn’t prevent the song from being released Stateside once The Beatles became popular, as the b-side to Beatles original, “Cry for a Shadow”, whereas it had originally been released in Europe with “Why” as the a-side.
