Did The BeatlesRrip Off Nat King Cole for ‘Yesterday’?

Far Out Magazine ^ | WED 23RD MAR 2022 | Tom Taylor

[nickcarraway]

Did The Beatles rip off Nat King Cole for ‘Yesterday’?

The origin story of ‘Yesterday’ is one of the most well-known in music. McCartney woke up with the melody after a dream and ad-libbed the words “scrambled eggs” so that he that it wouldn’t slip his mind. It would seem he was simply fortunate that his breakfast fit the rhyming meter.

Owing to the fact it arrived as effortlessly as the posted next day delivery of a drunken order, he was convinced that it came so naturally it must have been lifted from one of his dad’s old jazz records. When he poured over the melody further and no similarities could be found the group ploughed on with the track.

Since that story emerged many musicologists have trawled the archives to see if a jazz origin actually exists. British music buff Spencer Leigh believes that the melody may have seeded itself in McCartney’s musical cranium via Nat King Cole’s 1953 version of ‘Answer Me, My Love’. When the orchestral flourishes of Nat King Cole are cast to one side, the contours of the track prove very similar, but Leigh’s argument gains particular traction with the lyric, “Yesterday, I believed that love was here to stay, won’t you tell me where I’ve gone astray.”

However, despite this McCartney’s spokesman once told the BBC: “To me, the two songs are about as similar as ‘Get Back’ and ‘God Save the Queen’.” Indeed, while on the one hand, certain similarities are striking, rhyming emphasis on ‘ay’ is one of the most common in music and the hanging notes that Nat King Cole utilises are also frequently occurring in many other Beatles ballads.

Ultimately, if it wasn’t for McCartney revealing the origin it would probably have gone unnoticed as the tracks are very different in truth, and the main conclusion is that the unconscious mind is one hell of a strange place. In truth, there are similarities, but it is nowhere near close enough to be considered plagiarism.

As Nick Cave once declared: “The great beauty of contemporary music, and what gives it its edge and vitality, is its devil-may-care attitude toward appropriation — everybody is grabbing stuff from everybody else, all the time. It’s a feeding frenzy of borrowed ideas that goes toward the advancement of rock music — the great artistic experiment of our era.” The Beatles were masters and pioneers of this.

Furthermore, the fact that their ‘Yesterday’ has now been covered by well over 2000 artists and had already amassed over six million radio plays almost two decades ago is testimony to this feeding frenzy. In short, it’s a song that proves almost impossible to imagine a world without.

In fact, it’s so impossible to imagine the world without that McCartney dreaming it into existence brings to mind the following Hoagy Carmichael quote: “And then it happened, that queer sensation that this melody was bigger than me. Maybe I hadn’t written it all. The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters in the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, ‘maybe I didn’t write you, but I found you’.”

[Fiji Hill]

There were two versions of the earlier song. Answer Me, Lord Above, a hit for Frankie Laine in 1953, takes the form of a prayer in which the singer asks God why he lost his love and beseeches him to let her know that he still loves her. In the Nat King Cole version from a year later, the singer makes an appeal to his lover.

In my opinion, Anne Shelton's version of the song, from 1954, is far and away the best and is one of my favorite songs of the year.

[Harpotoo]

Who owns the 12 bar blues that everyone rips off?-)

[the OlLine Rebel]

Chuck and Lennon with Yoko - a brief summary of the disaster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgZiPO9V_aQ

The long version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbGuxGGOIV0

[Fiji Hill]

This not a “Surfin USA “ / “Sweet Little Sixteen” thing.

How about a Chuck Berry/Clarence "Bon Ton" Garlow thing?

Route 90--Clarence "Bon Ton" Garlow (1954)

[Seruzawa]

So what if they did? They all listen to other’s music and adapt what they like. Imagine what would happen if Beethoven, Mozart and Bach were alive today to sue everyone who adapted their music.

[Yo-Yo]

I think they were going by the lyric, which in the above article is quoted as:

but Leigh’s argument gains particular traction with the lyric, “Yesterday, I believed that love was here to stay, won’t you tell me where I’ve gone astray.”

But the full verse is:

You were mine yesterday
I believed that love was here to stay
Won't you tell me where I've gone astray
Please answer me my love

The cadence and rhythm are completely different, even if the snipet "yesterday I believed that love was here to stay" is remotely similar to "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they're here to stay."

[RummyChick]

While Jethro Tull was more forgiving then they should have been..listen to this little known song and see if you can figure out who lifted it without looking at the comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAnh1waFPeY

[MotorCityBuck]

Excellent. 👍

[erlayman]

I don’t get plagiarism. McCartney was exactly afraid of this and played it for everyone he could to make sure they hadn’t heard it.

[Yo-Yo]

...and of Chuck Berry. Such a fan, that Yoko was jealous and ruined a song they we’re singing together with her caterwauling.

[nicollo]

Almost the worst Beatles song. Too bad Cole didn't keep it to himself.

[ifinnegan]

And Lennon says “you can’t catch me”.

[bigbob]

But this could be the last time such a claim is made...bittersweet as it may be.

[P-Marlowe]

I wrote a song once and played it for a couple of members of our worship group. I asked it they thought it might have already been written.

They both were able to name that tune.

Almost all simple melodies and chord progressions have already been written.

[FreedomPoster]

Precisely correct. Everything was Lennon-McCartney.

[Kevmo]

Furthermore, the fact that their ‘Yesterday’ has now been covered by well over 2000 artists
***Someone should do a cover ensemble concatenation mix between the 2 songs.

[sanjuanbob]

Good ear. Theft all the way.

[irishjuggler]

Whoa, I’ve never heard that one. Interesting.

The story I’ve read is that “Surfin USA” was originally credited to Brian Wilson, but when Chuck Berry’s people cried foul, Brian’s father Murry Wilson didn’t want litigation so he assigned 100% of the songwriting to Chuck. As the story goes, Chuck joked for years about how he was making more money off Surfin USA than his own stuff.

But perhaps Murry paid the wrong guy. Ha.

[Steve_Seattle]

It sounds like Yesterday repeats one line of the lyrics from the Nat King Cole song, but that’s it. The other lyrics are very different, and the melody is totally different.

[real saxophonist]

I used to have music and occasional lyrics come to me in dreams. Kept staff paper by the bed to write them down. Still have a bunch of stuff in my head that I will never record or publish.

These days, the nightmares leave no room for music.