As McCartney melodies go, it’s direct, slamming straight into its title, just like She Loves You. Written by McCartney, Hey Jude bears his signature touch: empathy set to elegance. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features The Beatles performing Hey Jude on the David Frost Show, 1968. So, of all the countless classics the Beatles recorded, Hey Jude is one of the three or four that younger music lovers most want to hear. This month, Hey Jude was the No 1 Beatles song on Apple Music on Spotify, it was No 4, again just behind Let It Be and Come Together, with the George Harrison-penned Here Comes the Sun pipping them all (despite not being a single – go, George!). Though the Beatles’ early hits sold more copies, it’s the later ones that linger. A little chart was published, with Hey Jude joining Come Together and Let It Be on the podium.
Na na songs plus#
For the Beatles obsessive, Christmas had come a day early – all the songs on tap, plus a popularity contest. On Christmas Eve 2015, the Beatles’ music appeared, belatedly, on streaming sites: like the Queen going to a party, McCartney and Ringo Starr prefer to arrive after everyone else. Hey Jude is a crowd-pleaser in another sense. So they walked into the building, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, wearing gowns and mortarboards and belted out the Beatles classic. “I felt tempted to sing them.” At Oxford in 2016, the matriculation ceremony that welcomes every undergraduate was enlivened by a group of students deciding that what the Sheldonian Theatre needed, on a Saturday morning, was a drunken rendition of Hey Jude. “Their Hey Jude stopped after the first verse because I don’t think they knew any more of the words,” Stephen Spurr said. Contacted by the London Evening Standard, the headteacher kept his cool. At Westminster School, at which fees cost more than £23,000 a year, the boys and girls went into Latin prayers one day in 2012 and pulled a stunt planned on Facebook, singing Hey Jude as the organist launched into Deus Misereatur. Those nahh-nahs know no class boundaries. “The only good thing that came out of ,” said Shane Warne, commentating on Sky, “was the crowd’s wonderful rendition of Hey Jude.”Ġ1:03 Hey Jude at 50: four things you may not know about the Beatles hit – video And it has been sung for the rain – at Edgbaston last year, when a shower sent England and Australia off the field. England supporters sing it for Joe Root, the team’s boyish captain. The song has also become a cricket chant. Into the gap after “Nahh, na, na, nahh-na-na, nahhh”, you can slot almost any pair of syllables – Giroud, City, Geordie. Any decent song needs to be singable, but Hey Jude goes further: it’s yellable and flexible. At Arsenal, Gooners used it to serenade Olivier Giroud, the team’s sleek French striker, who said of the track before he left for Chelsea : “It gives me goosebumps.” It also rings out at Newcastle and Cardiff, thus spanning the four points of the Premier League compass. At Manchester City, fans sang it after the team won their first Premier League title in 2012. Hey Jude, which turns 50 on 30 August, is the Beatles song most likely to be bellowed by a choir of thousands. The most covered Beatles song is Yesterday, the biggest seller is She Loves You and the biggest crowdpleaser is Hey Jude. This isn’t just apples and oranges, it’s the whole fruit stall, so if we must use superlatives, we’d better narrow them down. The Beatles’ range was so broad that it would be easier to name Matisse’s best painting or Meryl Streep’s best performance – which wouldn’t be easy at all.
According to Rolling Stone and USA Today, it’s something epic: A Day in the Life, which often does well in polls, perhaps because it’s written by both Lennon and McCartney. According to the NME, it’s something psychedelic: Strawberry Fields Forever, which wasn’t even the best song on the single it appeared on, alongside Penny Lane. According to the Daily Telegraph, it’s something nostalgic: In My Life. Y ou could argue forever about which of the Beatles’ songs is the greatest.