"Yesterday" is a song originally recorded by English rock band the Beatles for their 1965 album Help!. Although credited to "Lennon–McCartney", the song was written by Paul McCartney. It remains popular today with more than 2,200 cover versions and is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music. "Yesterday" was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. 1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year. Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century alone. McCartney is the only member of the Beatles to appear on the recording, and it was the first official recording by the Beatles that relied upon a performance by a single member of the band. He was accompanied by a string quartet. (More from Wikipedia)
There are probably a lot of people who think of "Yesterday" as being the quintessential Beatles song. It is certainly their most successful – from Wikipedia: "It remains popular today with more than 2,200 cover versions and is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music. 'Yesterday' was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. 1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year. In 1997, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century alone."
However, this is not at all the way that "Yesterday" was viewed at the time. Although released as a Beatles song, "Yesterday" could be more properly viewed as a Paul McCartney solo work: Not only was Paul the sole songwriter, but he is also the only bandmember who performed on the song – he is accompanied by a string quartet.
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I discussed last month that the opening riff from "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" came to Keith Richards in a dream. "Yesterday" has a similar origin; Paul McCartney had the entire melody in his head after a dream (probably sometime in 1964), and he rushed to the piano to play the tune before it faded from memory. This worried him considerably, as he wondered whether his "dream" was actually someone else's song; but after checking with several people,Paul was convinced that it was an original work. There were no lyrics initially; the working title of the song was "Scrambled Eggs", with these opening lines: "Scrambled eggs / Oh, my baby how I love your legs".
Paul McCartney worked on the song incessantly for months; John Lennon is quoted in Wikipedia about "Yesterday": "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."
George Harrison had something to say about "Yesterday" as well: "Blimey, he's always talking about that song. You'd think he was Beethoven or somebody!". Producer George Martin also talked about the song at a later date: "'[Yesterday]' wasn't really a Beatles record and I discussed this with Brian Epstein: 'You know this is Paul's song . . . shall we call it Paul McCartney?' He said 'No, whatever we do we are not splitting up the Beatles.'"
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Surprisingly, "Yesterday" was not initially released as a single in England; from Wikipedia: "Since 'Yesterday' was unlike the Beatles' previous work and did not fit in with their image, and was essentially a solo recording, the Beatles refused to permit the release of a single in the United Kingdom."
