Which Beatles song has been played the most?
How on earth do you measure the impact of The Beatles? The size and scope of their success are barely reconcilable. We might view Taylor Swift as a giant of modern times thanks to the 114 million albums she has sold, but the Fab Four have flogged in excess of 600million. And when the young Liverpudlian lads burst onto the scene, the world’s population was only 3.1billion, remarkably about 38.75% of what it is today. That places The Beatles at their pomp at around 14 times more popular than Swift is presently. Imagine that. It’d be borderline insufferable.
This mamoth impact did not happen in isolation. The group were the benefactors of a revolution. But by no means does fortuitous timing diminish their brilliance, in fact, it almost exemplifies their brilliance that they took hold of the zeitgeist and propagated exactly what the era needed. They were an upbeat tonic at a time when America was mourning the assassination of JFK. They were a wholesome reminder to thousands of screaming girls of the brothers, cousins and boyfriends tragically being shipped off to Vietnam. They were an embodiment of a revolution that the broken world seemed to require.
Alongside the amazing music that they produced, these various factors ensured that they transcended pop culture and cemented themselves as fixtures of society at large. In fact, they’re still as ubiquitous, beloved, and evolving as they ever were. Turn on the radio now, and you won’t have to twiddle too many dials before you hear them playing. Flick through the TV, and you’ll quickly find them referenced. Google their name, and you’ll see reams of recently published pieces delving into their lore.
From Billie Eilish to Fontaines DC, the stars of today were raised on them, and the stars of tomorrow will be, too. They are a fixture of the arts. They are a fixture of our lives. So, they timelessly live on, and that means that their music is here, there and everywhere. They’ve sold more records than anybody, and by virtue of that, they’re the most-heard band, too. But which track has infiltrated our ears more than any other?
So, which Beatles song has been played the most?
Well, using US radio plays as the main metric, ‘Yesterday’ was not just the most-played Beatles song of the 20th century but the third most played of any artist. The data itself comes from BMI, “a performing rights organisation that represents more than 250,000 songwriters, composers and publishers with a repertoire of more than 3million songs and compositions from around the world and in all genres of music.”
This organisation monitors TV and radio output to amass relevant information on song usage and protect artists’ rights and royalty entitlements—and it logged a truly astonishing amount of plays for ‘Yesterday’ in the US alone. It was a huge hit all over the world, and as of 2012, it was found to be the fourth most successful song of all time in terms of royalties paid—given that it was released in an era where pirating and license laws were far looser, that’s all the more remarkable.
Alongside the fact that it is almost the most covered song of all time, and routinely tops the monthly most-plays for the band on Spotify, almost never dropping below their top four on Spotify, it might not just their most played song, but perhaps the most played song of all time. Not bad, Paul McCartney, not bad at all.
Bashed by Bob Dylan and belittled by John Lennon: What did The Beatles and their peers think of the song?
Ubiquity can be an issue in the arts, particularly for alternative bands, which, remarkably, were The Beatles. Nobody wants to say that their favourite song is the most famous song of all time. So, while the endless plays suggest that we all certainly love it deep down, it is also a track that has had its detractors.
For instance, Bob Dylan derided it as commonplace and seemed to hint that in the hands of another artist it wouldn’t have been quite so celebrated, remarking, “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.”
Meanwhile, Lennon was as duplicitous as he was on everything in life. He said it had some great lines but also commented that “if you read the whole song, it doesn’t say anything”. He called it “beautiful” but added, “I never wished I’d written it”.
Even George Martin’s comments on the genesis of the song seems to hint that Paul McCartney himself had some doubts over it, explaining, “Paul said he wanted a one-word title and was considering ‘Yesterday’, except that he thought it was perhaps too corny. I persuaded him that it was all right.” All right is hardly and assurance that hinted that he may well have cracked the biggest song in music history.
Lennon might have called it “Paul’s baby”, but even McCartney hasn’t been all that out-spoken about the track. However, imagine a time before all of the endless covers, movies and murderings of the song had occurred. And, when you get to that near-impossible point, you’ll soon realise that it’s one of those rare songs that make it unfathomable to imagine a world without it. Not just through its ubiquity either.
“It was kind of a rite of passage. Life isn’t going to be all roses. It’s going to get dark.”
Billy Joel
It taps into something unknowable. Dylan might be right, there might be objectively better songs cooked up on Tin Pan Alley, but do they have that certain something that the French call je ne sais quoi? Tracks with that seismic impact don’t come along every day, and of all the songs on Help!, many of which are pleasant little ditties or head-bobbing jams, it is ‘Yesterday’ that seems to have been fished from the ether and alchemically charmed into existence.
In truth, it’s not much more than a humble little folk song consisting of a few easy chords, but its brilliance resides in the fact that, in spite of that, it stands as a behemoth of pop culture. It punctuated the revolution with a wallop of earnest, bittersweet reality—and that’s where the deeper meanig that Lennon thought it was missing is derived.
As Billy Joel explained, “This was a completely different type of Beatles song. This was one guy, no drums, no electric guitars, an acoustic guitar, with a string quartet. I think I was about 15 or 16 when this came out — you know, at the height of puberty. I recognized that this was something dark, troubling, sad.”
That brooding melancholy has sustained, it’s universal, and deeply human, as Joel told Stereogum when championing it as McCartney’s finest work, “A lot of people in my age group related to that song in the same way. It was kind of a rite of passage. Life isn’t going to be all roses. It’s going to get dark, and sometimes you’re going to be sad, and you’re going to have to deal with adult feelings.”
As Aidan Moffat of Arab Stap pertinently points out, “Who can deny the beauty of ‘Yesterday’?” Well, anyone who has tried has a couple of billion plays to contend with.
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