“Hey Jude” by The Beatles

Paul McCartney wrote "Hey Jude", though it carries the usual Lennon–McCartney credit, and the Beatles put it out in August 1968 as a stand-alone single, the first record they issued on their own Apple label. It began as "Hey Jules", a song McCartney worked up to console John Lennon's young son Julian after John left his marriage for Yoko Ono, and it grew into a big-hearted pep talk: find the bright side of a sad situation, and don't let the chance of love slip by.

They cut it at Trident Studios in London, in the thick of the White Album sessions, and it was the first Beatles track made on eight-track equipment. The room was hardly harmonious. McCartney and George Harrison argued over the guitar part, and Ringo Starr quit the band for a spell, returning just before they filmed the promo clip with Michael Lindsay-Hogg directing. That clip, first shown on David Frost's Frost on Sunday, has the studio audience joining in on the coda, and what a coda: after the fourth verse the song rolls into more than four minutes of sing-along refrain, stretching the whole thing past seven.

No single that long had ever reached number one in Britain before; it sold around eight million copies and held the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks. McCartney still plays it in concert, leading the crowd through that coda.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.