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TL;DR:

  • The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” battled a song produced by Paul McCartney on the charts.
  • The latter song was performed by a singer who was not a member of The Beatles.
  • The tune in question was based on a Russian song.
The Beatles' Paul McCartney in black-and-white
Paul McCartney | Fiona Adams / Contributor

Paul McCartney gave a song to another 1960s singer. Subsequently, The Beatles‘ “Hey Jude” stopped the song from hitting No. 1. The incident might not have happened without the advice of the supermodel Twiggy.

Twiggy told The Beatles’ Paul McCartney to watch a certain Welsh singer perform on television

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the “Band on the Run” singer said Twiggy told him to watch a singer named Mary Hopkin on television. “So I tuned in next week to see her and she did have a very nice, very soft, well-controlled Welsh voice,” he said. “And she looked very pretty, young girl, blonde, long hair, so I thought, ‘OK. Quite right. We should sign her for Apple [Records], maybe make an interesting record with her.'”

Paul called Hopkin on the phone. “This beautiful little Welsh voice came on the phone and I said: ‘This is Apple Records here; would you be interested in coming down here to record for us?'” he recalled.

The song that rivaled The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ was based on an earlier song from Russia

Paul received an interesting response from Hopkin. “She said: ‘Well, her, would you like to speak to my mother?’ and then her mother came on the line and we had a chat and two further telephone conversations and later that week Mary and her mum came to London,” he added. “We had a nice lunch and went to Dick James’ studios in Oxford Street and I thought she was great.”

Paul produced a song for her called “Those Were the Days.” The track was based on a Russian song, and it featured lyrics credited to Boris Fomin and Gene Raskin. Notably, Fomin wrote the original version of the song and died in 1948, well before the new version existed. “Those Were the Days” became Hopkin’s signature tune.

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How ‘Those Were the Days’ performed compared to ‘Hey Jude’

Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now reports “Those Were the Days” peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 behind “Hey Jude.” The song became Hopkin’s only top 10 single in the United States, staying on the chart for 14 weeks. Hopkins included the tune on the album Post Card, which reached No. 28 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for 20 weeks.

Meanwhile, “Hey Jude” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks, making it The Beatles longest-running No. 1 single. It spent 19 weeks on the chart in total. The tune appeared on the compilation album Hey Jude, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the chart for 36 weeks.

“Those Were the Days” is a classic song even if it didn’t reach the commercial heights of “Hey Jude.”

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