"Yesterday"

Song: “Yesterday”
Album: Help (1965)

As the story goes, McCartney (literally) dreamed the melody of “Yesterday,” and rushed to a piano upon waking to play it out before forgetting the tune. Because it came to him so clearly and completely, he was worried that his subconscious was plagiarizing someone else’s song while he slept. So he played it for numerous people, figuring if no one claimed to have heard it before, he'd probably be safe in continuing to work on it. But he agonized over it, kicking the song around for quite some time before recording it. Actually, it was quite a while before it even had a title. As John and Paul often did when working out a new song, McCartney used nonsense “working lyrics”: “Scrambled Eggs/Oh, my baby how I love your legs.”

The song was a point of contention in the group, because the other Beatles were annoyed with Paul’s incessant fiddling with and chattering about the song. It probably could have been included on either A Hard Day’s Night or Beatles for Sale, but disagreements about the arrangement (or whether or not the song was even appropriate for a Beatles’ album) delayed its release. After Paul was comfortable with a  completed version of the song, it was actually initially offered to musician Chris Farlowe (probably because it didn’t sound like a Beatles tune), but Farlowe turned it down because it was “too soft.” Paul finally recorded it in June 1965 (four days after his 23rd birthday). A string arrangement was later added to the track, but none of the other Beatles were included in the final recording. George Martin apparently had a conversation with Brian Epstein about this, suggesting that maybe they should just release it as a Paul McCartney song, as the rest of the band had little to do with it (and it sounded unlike anything else they’d recorded).  But Epstein was adamant that they not split up the Beatles. The song was ultimately included on the Beatles 1965 Help!

The rest, as they say, is history. “Yesterday” went on to become one of the Beatles’ most popular songs. It’s still popular today, and has been covered more than 2,000 times.