Yesterday

There are songs that arrive almost like a whisper, and Yesterday is one of them. The story goes that the complete melody appeared to Paul McCartney in a dream, one night at his then-girlfriend's house on Wimpole Street. Upon waking, he rushed to the piano so as not to forget that music that had visited him in his dreams. At first, he had the concern of having heard it somewhere, of having unintentionally taken it from another work. He spent about a month asking people in the music scene if they recognized it, until he felt that, if no one claimed it, it was already his. Once convinced it was an original creation, he began to look for the lyrics.

It is known that they used a provisional lyric, almost as a game, called "Scrambled Eggs", with phrases like "scrambled eggs, oh my baby, I love your legs". The final recording of Yesterday was quite different from what The Beatles usually did. It was the first time that only one of them, McCartney, appeared on the track, accompanied only by a string quartet. In fact, the other band members were not convinced with this direction and even vetoed its release as a single in the United Kingdom. Despite this, other artists quickly recorded it. The song, which was officially released on the album Help! in August 1965, reached the top spot on the US charts and, over time, became one of the most covered musical pieces in history, surpassing 2,200 different recordings.