DOWNLOAD THE SONGSHEET
Do You Want to Know a Secret? (WORD)
Do You Want to Know a Secret? (PDF)
Neat and easy chord progression! For the [Ebm] chord, just slide your [Em] shape down one fret (towards the tuners).
In the United States, it was the first top ten song to feature Harrison as a lead singer, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1964 as a single released by Vee-Jay, VJ 587. "Do You Want to Know a Secret?", written in autumn 1962, was primarily composed by John Lennon but credited to Lennon–McCartney. The 1963 version by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas (a UK no. 2) credited the composition to "McCartney-Lennon". The song was inspired by "I'm Wishing", a tune from Walt Disney’s 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which Lennon's mother, Julia Lennon, would sing to him as a child. The first two lines of the song in Disney's movie ("Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell?") come right after the opening lyrics ("You'll never know how much I really love you... You'll never know how much I really care..."). In 1980, Lennon said that he gave "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" to Harrison to sing because "it only had three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world", but added "he has improved a lot since then." The song was recorded as part of their marathon ten-hour recording session on 11 February 1963 along with nine other songs for Please Please Me. Harrison sang two songs on Please Please Me — this song by Lennon–McCartney and "Chains" by Goffin/King.