14. Hey Jude (single, 1968)
Beatles version:
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I initially placed this in my second tier, with notes that read in part, "Why is half the song nananas? Did Paul McCartney look into the future and just see himself as a 78-year-old man who didn’t want to have to sing at his shows and could just turn it into a sing-along? Does anyone actually listen to the whole song? Pleasurably? Needs 50% fewer "nanana"s". Then I forced myself to keep listening to the song over and over, and it kept moving up my rankings despite the "nanana"s and later because of them (more on that below). Paul actually did not intend for the "nanana"s to go on so long, but said he was having so much fun that he just kept going.
As
everybody knows, Paul wrote this song for Julian Lennon while Julian's parents were in the midst of the divorce; the song was initially written as "Hey Jules." Paul came up with the song as he drove to visit them: "I thought, as a friend of the family, I would motor out to Weybridge and tell them that everything was all right: to try and cheer them up, basically, and see how they were.... I started singing: 'Hey Jules – don't make it bad, take a sad song, and make it better...' It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian..." John acknowledged the song as "one of Paul's masterpieces," and though he knew the song had been written to Julian, he also saw another meaning: "I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it, Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying, 'Hey, Jude - hey, John.' I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me. The words 'go out and get her' - subconsciously he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' ...The angel inside him was saying, 'Bless you.'"
Listening to the song as if both Paul and John were singing directly to Julian gives it a sweetness that launches it into my first tier solely by virtue of that fact. Layering in the emotion that John describes above, where he believes Paul is giving him a blessing, makes their vocals even more meaningful and touchingly beautiful. I feel a warmth and generosity in John's vocal in the song that he didn't often show. While John credits Paul wholly with this song, John did have one significant contribution: when Paul first played it for John, he said he would be changing the line "
the movement you need is on your shoulder" because "it sounds like a parrot." John thought it was the best line in the song, though, and convinced Paul not to take it out, saying, "I know what it means - it's great." That encouragement from John continues to affect Paul: "Then I could see it through his eyes. So when I play that song, that's the line when I think of John and I sometimes get a little emotional during that moment."
Luckily someone else has already done
a thorough analysis of the song's lyrical structure, so I can skip that part. As mentioned above, one of my favorite aspects of this song are the vocals, which I think Paul and John imbue with such warmth and richness as to expand the song from "buck up, kid" to a grander vision of how good life can be. It's like the optimism of "Here Comes The Sun" x 1000, swollen into a pure joy that was rarely seen from the band at this point (or from John at any point). Another aspect I particularly love about the song is the way it builds, which to me makes all this optimism
believable. It starts softly, with Paul's voice sounding warm and hopeful but not yet fully convincing. At each verse and then the bridge, additional instrumentation or vocal comes in - first the guitar and a light tambourine, then the drums, then the backing vocals, then the harmonies. With each addition, Paul's voice becomes stronger and more confident, moving from hopeful to insistent that everything is going to be all right, not just for Julian or John, but more broadly for the world as a whole. By the "nanana"s, the band has reached a state of jubilation, and the "nanana"s extend for so long because they were so exhilarated that they didn't want to stop. With that background, I found a whole new appreciation for the "nanana"s.
I'm tempted, as always, to do an analysis of the structure of the song or the various ways in which the musicality is stunning. But I don't think this song is best enjoyed that way. I think you just have to let it envelop you, let it transport you to this euphoric, blissful place that it establishes.
One fun note about the recording is that Paul started the final take without realizing that Ringo had gone to the bathroom: "...while I was doing it I suddenly felt Ringo tiptoeing past my back rather quickly, trying to get to his drums. And just as he got to his drums, boom boom boom, his timing was absolutely impeccable. So I think when those things happen, you have a little laugh and a light bulb goes off in your head and you think, 'This is the take!' And you put a little more into it. You think, 'oh, ####! This has got to be the take, what just happened was so magic!'"
After the recording was done, George Martin tried to get the band to cut down the length of the song, saying at over seven minutes it would not be played on the radio. The band won out, and guess what? It was still played on the radio. A lot. "Hey Jude" sold 10 million copies and had a longer run at #1 - nine weeks - than any other Beatles song.
Fun fact: listen first for an "oh" ~2:56 and then a "####### hell" ~2:58 that was left in the mix. John claimed this was Paul, but the more believable story is that it was John's reaction to flubbing a lyric just before that.
Mr. krista: "That song just keeps going. How long do you think they were in the studio nana'ing before they gave up the ghost and quit? How many more nananas did they actually do before the fade out? Like 15-20 minutes? They nanana for so long you forget it’s a cheer up song for John Lennon’s kid after John Lennon abandoned his family. Then he had nothing to do with Julian, after beating up his mom. Man, your heroes will disappoint you every time. What I’m saying is I don’t like it much."
Suggested cover: Wilson Pickett
