14 hours Ago By Parul Sharma
The Beatles happen to be the most-covered artists of all time – and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Their enduring cultural influence is just one part of what makes the Fab Four possibly the greatest musical act of all time, having cemented their place in the Hall of Fame – literally and figuratively. Not to be left behind are their songs – most of which have long withstood the test of time and become the soundtrack of many a life.
If musical genius wasn’t enough, The Beatles’ success is backed by solid data. The four-member band is considered to be the most successful musical act of all time, having sold over a record-breaking 600 millions albums worldwide. With 20 number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, the Fab Four’s generation-defining music revolutionised the industry and changed the history of music as we know it.
Being the most successful artists of all time comes with its own set of perks – one of them being eternally lasting relevance. Widely regarded as the most-covered artists of all time, The Beatles recorded almost 200 original songs, leaving the artists who came after them no dearth of music to choose from. With legendary singles like Let It Be and Here Comes The Sun, it may come as a surprise then, that The Beatles’ most-covered song of all time is actually Yesterday, as per the Guinness Book of Records.
With over 1,600 recorded renditions of the song, it remains unprecedented in its popularity even today. In fact, the Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) previously reported that Yesterday was performed more than seven million times in the 20th century alone. While it was never released as a single in the UK, Yesterday was voted the best song of the 20th century during a BBC Radio 2 poll comprising listeners and music experts, back in 1999.
Additionally in 2000, the iconic song was voted the number one pop song of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine and MTV. As per the biographers of The Beatles and Paul McCartney, Yesterday’s entire melody reportedly came to Sir Paul in a dream at his then-girlfriend Jane Asher’s Wimpole Street home. Upon awakening, Paul hurried to a piano and played the song’s tune in order to avoid forgetting it.
He was extremely concerned that he had subconsciously plagiarised someone else’s work and shared: “For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it.
" As was common for John Lennon and Paul McCartney during this period, a temporary working lyric was used, with the song’s initial title being Scrambled Eggs. The placeholder opening verse went: "Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs, not as much as I love scrambled eggs," until a more fitting and refined lyric was crafted. Talking about the record-holding song, John Lennon had shared: “The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it.
Every time we got together to write songs for a recording session, this one would come up. We almost had it finished. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn't find the right title.
“We called it 'Scrambled Eggs' and it became a joke between us. We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit, we just couldn't find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed.
I was sorry in a way, we'd had so many laughs about it.” Sir Paul went on to reveal that the breakthrough with the song’s now-iconic lyrics came during a 1965 trip to Portugal. Elaborating further, he shared: “I remember mulling over the tune of Yesterday, and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse.
I started to develop the idea ...
da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that's good. All my troubles seemed so far away. “It's easy to rhyme those a's: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there's a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey.
Sud-den-ly, and 'b' again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it.” Yesterday first appeared on The Beatles’ 1965 LP Help and was released as a single in the UK in 1976. It was alleged that the other three members of the band vetoed the song’s release as a single in the UK as its arrangement was so vastly different than any of their other songs: Paul accompanies solely by a string quartet.
Even though the song has been credited to Lennon/McCartney, it was written solely by Paul..
