The final recording was so different from other works by the Beatles that the band members vetoed the song's release as a single in the United Kingdom.

[7] Initially he was concerned, though, that he had subconsciously plagiarised someone else's work; as he put it: "For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before.

[8] During the shooting of Help!, a piano was placed on one of the stages where filming was being conducted, and McCartney took advantage of this opportunity to tinker with the song.

This eventually greatly annoyed the director Richard Lester, who lost his temper, telling McCartney to finish writing the song or he would have the piano removed.

[9] The patience of the other Beatles was also tested by McCartney's work in progress; George Harrison summed this up when he said: "Blimey, he's always talking about that song.

"[10] McCartney originally claimed he had written "Yesterday" during the Beatles' tour of France in 1964; however, the song was not released until the summer of 1965.

[11]McCartney said the breakthrough with the lyrics came during a trip to Portugal in May 1965: I remember mulling over the tune 'Yesterday', and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse.

[12]On 27 May 1965, McCartney and Asher flew to Lisbon for a holiday in Albufeira, Algarve, and he borrowed an acoustic guitar from Bruce Welch, in whose house they were staying, and completed the work on "Yesterday".

[13] The song was offered as a demo to Chris Farlowe before the Beatles recorded it, but he turned it down as he considered it "too soft".

[14] In a March 1967 interview with Brian Matthew, McCartney said that Lennon came up with the word that would replace "scrambled eggs": Yesterday.

[15] In 2001, Ian Hammond speculated that McCartney subconsciously based "Yesterday" on Ray Charles' version of Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia on My Mind".

[11] In July 2003, British musicologists stumbled upon superficial similarities between the lyric and rhyming schemes of "Yesterday" and David Whitfield's, Frankie Laine's, and Nat King Cole's "Answer Me, My Love"; originally a German song by Gerhard Winkler and Fred Rauch called Mütterlein, it was a number 1 hit for Laine on the UK Singles Chart in 1953 as "Answer Me, O Lord", leading to speculation that the song had influenced McCartney.

Ostensibly simple, featuring only McCartney playing an Epiphone Texan steel-string acoustic guitar[17] backed by a string quartet in one of the Beatles' first uses of session musicians,[18] "Yesterday" has two contrasting sections, differing in melody and rhythm, producing a sense of variety and fitting contrast.

[23] In this sense, the opening chord is a decoy; as musicologist Alan Pollack points out, the home key (F major) has little time to establish itself before "heading towards the relative D minor".

(hint) It's a fine piece of work with something going for it in virtually every department: the unique arrangement, an attractive tune, even some asymmetrical phrasing and a couple of off-beat chord progressions.

[24][23] This viola line, the "blue" cello phrase, the high A sustained by the violin over the final verse and the minimal use of vibrato are elements of the string arrangement attributable to McCartney rather than George Martin.

When McCartney appeared on The Howard Stern Show, he stated that he owned the original lyrics to "Yesterday" written on the back of an envelope.

[26] When asked whether some of the lyrics from "Yesterday" are a reference to his early loss of his mother, Mary McCartney, he stated that "I didn't mean it to be, but ... it could be".

[27] The track was recorded at Abbey Road Studios on 14 June 1965, immediately following the taping of "I'm Down" and four days before McCartney's 23rd birthday.

On 17 June, an additional vocal track by McCartney and a string quartet were overdubbed on take two and that version was released.

The musicians objected to playing with headphones, so I gave them Paul's voice and guitar on two speakers either side of their microphones.

The story of the addition of the original string quartet is well known, however, few people know how limited the recording was technically, and so the case for not including it was strong, but how could we ignore such a marvellous work?

A single was released in the US, pairing "Yesterday" with "Act Naturally", a track which featured vocals by Ringo Starr.

The version begins with the acoustic guitar intro from the song "Blackbird" transposed down a whole step to F major from its original key G to transition smoothly into "Yesterday".

[42] After Muzak switched in the 1990s to programs based on commercial recordings, its inventory grew to include about 500 "Yesterday" covers.

[43] In his 1972 article on the development of rock music, Joel Vance of Stereo Review magazine credited the song with originating the vogue for classical and baroque rock, anticipating the Rolling Stones' recording of "As Tears Go By" and works by artists such as the Moody Blues and the Classics IV.

[44] "Yesterday" won the Ivor Novello Award for "Outstanding Song of 1965",[45] and came second in the "Most Performed Work of the Year" category, behind the Lennon–McCartney composition "Michelle".

[52] After the band had failed to win any of the ten awards, Alan Livingston, the head of Capitol Records, officially protested about the results, saying that "Yesterday" being passed over for the Song of the Year "makes a mockery of the whole event".

[57] At the 2006 Grammy Awards, McCartney performed "Yesterday" live as a mash-up with Linkin Park and Jay Z's "Numb/Encore".

In 2012, the BBC reported that "Yesterday" remained the fourth-most-successful song of all time in terms of royalties paid, having amassed a total of £19.5 million in payments.