"I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the band's first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, starting the British Invasion of the United States music charts. The song entered the chart on 18 January 1964 at number 45; it later held the number one spot for seven weeks, and ended up charting for 15 weeks.
Starting at the song's final week at #1 on the American charts, the Beatles had a whopping record of seven #1 songs in one year. In order, these were "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "She Loves You", "Can't Buy Me Love", "Love Me Do" (a somewhat out-of-place 1962 re-release), "A Hard Day's Night", "I Feel Fine", and ending with "Eight Days a Week" one year later.
It also held the top spot in the United Kingdom charts. A million copies of the single had already been ordered on its release. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" became the Beatles' best-selling single worldwide.
The song was greeted by raving fans on both sides of the Atlantic but was dismissed by some critics as nothing more than another fad song that would not hold up to the test of time. Cynthia Lowery of the Associated Press expressed her exasperation with Beatlemania by saying of the Beatles: "Heaven knows we've heard them enough. It has been impossible to get a radio weather bulletin or time signal without running into 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'."
Bob Dylan was impressed by the Beatles' innovation, saying, "They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid." For a time Dylan thought the Beatles were singing "I get high" instead of "I can't hide". He was surprised when he met them and found out that none of them had actually smoked marijuana.
The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, but the award went to Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz for "The Girl from Ipanema". However, in 1998, the song won the Grammy Hall of Fame Award. It has also made the list in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. In addition, the Recording Industry Association of America, the National Endowment for the Arts and Scholastic Press have named "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as one of the Songs of the Century.
In 2004, it was ranked number 16 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In 2010, Rolling Stone placed the song at number two on the 100 Greatest Beatles Songs after "A Day in the Life".
It was ranked number two in Mojo's list on the "100 Records That Changed the World", after Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti".
The song was ranked number thirty-nine on Billboard's All Time Top 100
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" is currently ranked as the twenty-third best song of all time, as well as the number three song of 1963, in an aggregation of critics' lists at acclaimedmusic.net.
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