The Working Title of The Beatles’ Hit “Yesterday” Was a Silly Breakfast-Related Joke

A working title can help a songwriter work out a melody first, before replacing it with the final title. That’s exactly what Paul McCartney did for The Beatles’ 1965 hit “Yesterday.” In 1964, McCartney assigned the working title “Scrambled Eggs” so he wouldn’t forget the melody before he found something more suitable. It’s funny to consider this No. 1 hit as initially being about breakfast food, but it’s true. In 2010, McCartney sang the original “Scrambled Eggs” version on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The melody of the song came to McCartney in a dream, and the only phrase he could use to hold onto the melody was about eggs.

Originally, McCartney Believed He Was Plagiarizing Another Song

McCartney thought the melody was familiar and didn’t think it was his own at first. He took the song around to people in the music business, searching for who the song belonged to. He claimed it felt like turning something in to the police, and if no one claimed it in a week, then it was his own. Paul held onto “Scrambled Eggs” for months, playing the tune on the piano in between shooting takes for The Beatles’ film Help!

In May 1965, while on vacation with then girlfriend Jane Asher, Paul revisited “Scrambled Eggs.” Jane Asher had taken a nap, and McCartney had some time alone to rework the lyrics.

“I started to develop the idea: ‘Scram-ble-d eggs, da-da da.’ I knew the syllables had to match the melody, obviously: ‘da-da da,’ ‘yes-ter-day,’ ‘sud-den-ly,’ ‘fun-il-ly,’ ‘mer-il-ly,’ and ‘yes-ter-day,’ that’s good,” McCartney said. “‘All my troubles seemed so far away.’ It’s easy to rhyme those ‘a’s: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there’s a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. ‘Sud-den-ly,’ and ‘b’ again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it.”

Yesterday Holds the Record for the Most Covered Song of All Time

In 1965, “Yesterday” became The Beatles’ 10th No. 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100. It is the only hit song by The Beatles featuring only one member of the band. It is estimated that the song has been recorded over 3,000 times, most notably by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Marvin Gaye. The song was voted the No. 1 pop song of all time in a poll by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine in 1999.

Additionally, it is the most played song on the radio or television, with more than six million plays. It has been said that at any given time, “Yesterday” is being played somewhere in the world.