'Yesterday' is the title of a song written by Paul McCartney and recorded by The Beatles in 1965 for their album Help!. It was the first official recording by the Beatles which relied upon a performance by a single member of the band, although the background accompaniment of a string quartet was added a few days later during the editing stage.

'Yesterday' has achieved recognition as being the most recorded song in the history of popular music: Its entry in the Guinness Book of Records suggests over 3000 different cover versions to date, by an eclectic mix of artists including Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Wet Wet Wet and Boyz II Men. It won an Ivor Novello award for the 'Outstanding Song of 1965' and more recently it was named the greatest pop song since 1963 by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine.

The story goes that McCartney composed the entire song in his sleep one night when he was staying over at his London flat, and woke up the next morning with the melody still playing in his head, whereupon he rushed over to a piano and wrote it down before he had chance to forget it. Paul's initial worry was that he had subconciously plagiarised someone else's work, and so for the next month he went around playing the tune to people who he knew in the music industry, asking all of them if it sounded familiar. He eventually convinced himself that this was an original composition and set about putting words to it. As was common practice at the time, a substitute working lyric was used for the song until something more suitable was written, and here is one of the early versions.

Scrambled Eggs,
Have an omelette with some Muenster cheese,
Put your dishes in the washbin please,
So I can clean the scrambled eggs.

Join me, do,
There's a lot of eggs for me and you,
I've got ham and cheese and bacon too,
So go get two and join me do.

Fried or sunny side,
Just aren't right,
The mix-bowl begs,
Quick, go get a pan, and we'll scramble up some eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs.

Scrambled eggs,
Good for breakfast, dinner time or brunch,
Don't buy six or twelve, buy a bunch,
And we'll have a lunch on scrambled eggs.

In June 1965, while on holiday in Portugal at The Villa of Shadows, McCartney finally completed the released lyric which touched upon the death
of his mother. Two days after returning home, the track was laid down at Abbey Road Studios on the 14th and 17th June 1965. Although Paul had fallen in love with the song he had a much harder time convincing the other members of the band that it was worthy of an album place, the main objection being that it did not fit in with their image. In fact the feeling was so strong that John, George and Ringo vetoed the song from being released as a single in the UK, although this did not happen in America where it spent four weeks at number one.

In July 2003, there was speculation by British musicologists that McCartney may have been influenced by the Nat King Cole song Answer Me, which has a similar lyric and rhyming scheme. [1]

• Song lyrics and trivia

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