The 2 Beatles Songs Bob Dylan Said Were ‘Cop-Outs’
Bob Dylan knew The Beatles were the most successful musical act in the world, but he never tried competing with them. While they both made rock music, Dylan considered The Beatles more pop rock, which wasn’t the music he tried to make. He never conformed to the mainstream, and he once called these two Beatles songs “cop-outs” after another artist performed them.
Bob Dylan said ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Michelle’ were ‘cop-outs’
“Yesterday” and “Michelle” are two of the most popular songs by The Beatles and were prominent during the 1960s. Other artists wanted to capitalize on their success by performing covers of those songs and taking in the rewards. In a 1966 interview shared by Far Out, Bob Dylan acknowledged that The Beatles had been “accepted” by most audiences, and he said it was a “cop-out” for other artists to perform “Yesterday” or “Michelle”.
“The Beatles are accepted, and you’ve got to accept them for what they do. They play songs like ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’, a lot of smoothness there,” Dylan said. “Yeah, it’s the thing to do, to tell all the teeny boppers ‘I dig The Beatles’, and you sing a song like ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Michelle’. Hey, God knows, it’s such a cop-out, man, both of those songs.”
‘Yesterday’ and ‘Michelle’ are two of the most well-known Beatles songs
“Yesterday” and “Michelle” are two Beatles songs that have withstood the test of time. Both songs were written by Paul McCartney, with “Yesterday” being the more popular of the two. It’s the most covered song of all time, with thousands of versions recorded by famous musicians and amateur YouTubers.
The track debuted in 1965 on the album Help!, but was released as a single in the U.S. It topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks before being knocked off by The Rolling Stones.
“Michelle” was released in 1965 on The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album. While it didn’t chart in the U.K. or the U.S., it was released as a single in several European countries and peaked at No. 1 in France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, and Belgium. “Michelle” also won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1967.
Dylan was a fan of The Beatles but didn’t want anyone to know
The Beatles adored Bob Dylan and often publicly praised the singer, especially John Lennon. Dylan did share mutual admiration, saying the Liverpool band was doing things no one else in music was doing.
“They were doing things nobody was doing,” Dylan told Rolling Stone in a 1972 interview. “Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid. You could only do that with other musicians.”
Still, the singer didn’t want to tell anyone he was a fan, mainly because he didn’t want to give them too much credit. He knew Beatlemania was on the way, even though he refused to admit it.
“But I just kept it to myself that I really dug them,” he admitted. “Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go. I was not about to put up with other musicians, but in my head The Beatles were it. In Colorado, I started thinking it was so far out that I couldn’t deal with it — eight in the Top Ten.”
