The #1 song on the Hot 100 the week of October 5, 1965, was a little tune called ‘Yesterday’ by a little band known as The Beatles. The track was not released as a single in the UK because the band felt it was more of a Paul McCartney tune than a proper Beatles release, but in the U.S. it topped the charts for four weeks.

Considering I wrote 40 Beatles Weekend posts back in 2009/10, I was sure I had already featured ‘Yesterday.’ But alas, I made it to Song of the Day #6,300 without posting one of the most beloved, famous, and oft-covered songs of all time.

This is the song that famously came to Paul in a dream. He stumbled out of bed and ran to the piano to capture it, improvising nonsense lyrics as a placeholder: “Scrambled eggs / Oh my baby how I love your legs / Not as much as I love scrambled eggs.” At first he assumed he had heard the melody somewhere before but after weeks of asking around, he finally accepted it was his own creation.

The completed song, with its plaintive lyrics and orchestral production, stood out on the back half of the otherwise pop/rock Help! album. It signaled a new direction for the band that would become even more apparent on Rubber Soul, released later that year.

John Lennon was frequently critical of ‘Yesterday,’ damning it with faint praise or dismissing it entirely. I imagine that’s because he was, to quote one of his own songs, just a jealous guy.