Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday
[Verse 2]
Suddenly
I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly
[Bridge]
Why she had to go
I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong
Now I long for yesterday
[Verse 3]
Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday
[Bridge]
Why she had to go
I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong
Now I long for yesterday
About
“Yesterday” is the most covered song in history, with over 2,000 versions having been recorded. A spare, haunting song of lost love from the early Beatles catalog, it was sung perfectly by a young Paul McCartney.
McCartney dreamed the entire melody before he arranged the music with George Martin. According to Rolling Stone:
‘It fell out of bed,’ Paul McCartney once said about the origins of ‘Yesterday.’ ‘I had a piano by my bedside, and I must have dreamed it, because I tumbled out of bed and put my hands on the piano keys and I had a tune in my head. It was just all there, a complete thing. I couldn’t believe it. It came too easy.’
The working lyrics Paul used to fit the tune before he wrote the actual words started with “Scrambled eggs / Oh my baby how I love your legs / Not as much as I love scrambled eggs.” Picking up on that famous trivia, Jimmy Fallon eventually developed the rest of “Scrambled eggs” and recorded it with Paul.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
On a September 2018 interview with WIRED, Paul Mccartney explained:
Great thing about “Yesterday” was, it kind of wrote itself. People say to me, “Do you believe in mysticism and magic?” With that story, I kind of have to, because I just woke up one morning and I had [the melody playing in my head]. I was like, “What’s that? I like that tune!” After a couple of weeks asking various people, like John [Lennon], the guys in the band, George Martin, everyone said, “We don’t know, it must be yours,” and it was. It was very special, because, as I said, I just dreamed it, what a gift! I think a lot of people dream and there’s music in the dream, but they just go, “Oh, yeah, a Rolling Stones concert! I love this,” and I’ve done that too, and they’ve been doing a song I don’t know! I’d kind of wake up and be, like, “Woah, what’s that, what’s that?” And sometimes you can’t remember. So that’s how “Yesterday” happened, in the early 60s.
Paul about his arguably most famous song:
My dad used to know a lot of old jazz tunes, I thought maybe I’d just remembered it from the past… We were a little embarrassed about it. We were a rock & roll band… the most complete song I have ever written.