Yesterday

…of the Fab Four, “Yesterday” is a wistful ballad performed solely by Paul McCartney and an accompanying string quartet. Nonetheless, the song proved extremely popular with fans, inspiring countless cover versions, and the stripped-down arrangement hinted at the band’s future adventurousness. By the time the Beatles officially broke up,…

The 1965 Beatles track “Yesterday” (wholly written by McCartney and performed alone with a string quartet) has been played some six million times on U.S. radio and television, far outstripping its nearest competitor. Moreover, with over 3,000 cover versions, it is also the most-recorded song ever. In 2010 McCartney…

…only by the Beatles’ “Yesterday” but by the remarkable way in which their fellow Liverpudlians Gerry and the Pacemakers established Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as the most sung song in the stands of football (soccer) stadiums in Britain.

…the chamber pop ballad “Yesterday” and the enigmatic folk tune “Norwegian Wood” (both in 1965) to the hallucinatory hard rock song “Tomorrow Never Knows” (1966), with a lyric inspired by Timothy Leary’s handbook The Psychedelic Experience (1964). It also included the carnivalesque soundscape of “Being for the Benefit of…