A Star Thought Paul McCartney Wrote The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ for Her

Paul McCartney played The Beatles’ “Yesterday” for a major 1960s singer. He accidentally gave her the impression he was offering her the song. The 1960s star recorded the track anyway. Surprisingly, her cover sounds happy.

Paul McCartney played The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ for a singer when he was worried

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul said he went to the home of a famous singer after writing “Yesterday.” He worried the track sounded too much like a preexisting song, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “I took it round to Alma Cogan at her flat in Kensington and asked, ‘What’s this song?’ because Alma was a bit of a song buff; there are a lot of people around like that and I admire them a lot,” Paul recalled. “Alma was very songy, knew a lot of Jerome Kern and Cole Porter and that kind of thing, and she said, ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s beautiful.'”

There was some miscommunication during the interaction. “I later realized, she thought I was trying to give it to her, because if you as a composer do that, by implication you’re offering her the song, just because she’s a singer,” Paul said. “The etiquette is almost, ‘I’m writing this for you,’ so I think there was a little moment of doubt. But I didn’t see it as that at all. I was doing it for a very practical reason: to see if someone like her who knew all the old classics could recognize it.”

Alma Cogan flipped The Beatles’ song on its head

Cogan covered the song regardless. Her version appeared on the album Alma and it’s distinct from the original. It has a full orchestra behind it, so it has more musical bombast than The Beatles’ version of the song. Its instrumental feels like it could be the score for an epic film by Cecil B. DeMille or David Lean.

Oddly, her take on the track sounds triumphant. It’s a memorable take on a standard, but it doesn’t really fit with the lyrics. At least the cover shows off Cogan’s creativity.

John Lennon felt ‘Yesterday’ was similar to another ballad by the Fab Four

“Yesterday” went on to become one of The Beatles’ most beloved songs. Paul has repeatedly talked about his initial fear that it sounded too much like another song. If it was derivative, someone would have noticed by now! After all, the tune has been ubiquitous for nearly 60 years.

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John said The Beatles’ “And I Love Her” was Paul’s first attempt at writing “Yesterday.” Perhaps “And I Love Her” is the track Paul was thinking about. That would be strange though, as “And I Love Her” has bossa nova influences that aren’t present in “Yesterday.”

Regardless of what inspired “Yesterday,” Paul crafted a tune so great that Cogan and numerous other artists covered it.