The Beatles - YesterdayCopyright - 1965 EMI Records Ltd."Yesterday" is a pop song originally recorded by The Beatles for their album Help! (1965). According to the Guinness Book of Records, "Yesterday" has the most cover versions of any song ever written. The song remains popular today with more than 3000 recorded cover versions, the first hitting the United Kingdom top 10 three months after the release of Help!. BMI asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century alone, probably cementing the song as the most performed composition of all time. "Yesterday" was voted the best song of the 20th century, in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners - despite never being a UK number one single."Yesterday" takes the form of a melancholic acoustic ballad about a break-up. It was the first official recording by The Beatles that relied upon a performance by a single member of the band: Paul McCartney was accompanied solely by a string quartet. The final recording differed so greatly from other works by The Beatles that the other three members of the band vetoed the release of the song as a single in the United Kingdom. Although credited to "Lennon/McCartney", as were all Beatles songs written by either member of the pair, the song was written solely by McCartney.OriginsAccording to biographers of McCartney and The Beatles, McCartney composed the entire melody in a dream one night in his room at the Wimpole Street home of his then girlfriend Jane Asher and her family. Upon waking, he hurried to a piano, turned on a tape recorder, and played the tune to avoid letting it slip into the recesses of his mind.Awards, accolades and brickbats"Yesterday" has achieved recognition as being the most recorded song in the history of popular music; its entry in the Guinness Book of Records suggests over 3000 different cover versions to date, by an eclectic mix of artists including The Seekers, Joan Baez, Liberace, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Wet Wet Wet, Plácido Domingo, The Head Shop."Yesterday" won the Ivor Novello Award for 'Outstanding Song of 1965', and came second for 'Most Performed Work of the Year', losing out to another McCartney composition, "Michelle". The song has received its fair share of acclaim in recent times as well, ranking 13th on Rolling Stone's 2004 list The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) placed "Yesterday" third on their list of songs of the 20th century most performed on American radio and television, with approximately seven million performances. "Yesterday" was surpassed only by The Association's "Never My Love" and the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Loving Feeling"."Yesterday," however, has also been criticised for being mundane and mawkish; Bob Dylan had a marked dislike for the song, stating that "If you go into the Library of Congress, you can find a lot better than that. There are millions of songs like 'Michelle' and 'Yesterday' written in Tin Pan Alley". Ironically, Dylan ultimately recorded his own version of "Yesterday" four years later, but it was never released.Shortly before his death in 1980, Lennon explained that he thought the lyrics didn't "resolve into any sense... They're good — but if you read the whole song, it doesn't say anything; you don't know what happened. She left and he wishes it were yesterday — that much you get — but it doesn't really resolve. ... Beautiful — and I never wished I'd written it."Lyrics: Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away Now it look as though they're here to stay Oh, I believe in yesterday Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be There's a shadow hanging over me oh, yesterday came suddenly Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away oh, I believe in yesterday Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away oh, I believe in yesterday, Mm