The lyric John Lennon called “the best line” in The Beatles song ‘Hey Jude’
The Beatles’ story would not have unfolded as it did without each of the classic members, as each brought something essential to the group—whether musically, personally, or spiritually. Together, they had the unique chemistry needed to achieve game-changing success and establish a legacy that continues to resonate today. However, it’s undeniable that the two figures at the heart of it all were John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
The enduring influence of Lennon and McCartney is a testament to their power as the most influential songwriting partnership of all time, even 54 years after The Beatles’ split. Together, they propelled the band forward, serving as the driving force behind their evolution from an exciting blues and R&B-based act into something entirely distinct and experimental.
Although most people remember the pair for their acrimony at the end of the band’s career, which resulted in them taking explicit potshots at each other in their solo material, even towards the latter stages of the Fab Four’s lifespan, they would still have moments where their longstanding friendship shone through the mire. It helped them create some of their best-ever music.
Lennon and McCartney might also have been brutally frank about each other’s creative and personal pitfalls in the years after their band’s end in 1970, but both were also forthcoming about what they perceived as their opposite number’s redeeming qualities.
According to McCartney, it was Lennon’s optimism that convinced him to keep a line he disliked in the 1968 non-album single, ‘Hey Jude’. Written during a tumultuous period for The Beatles, when the band was beginning to fracture irreparably, the song already carried significant emotional weight. Originally conceived as ‘Hey Jules’, it was penned by McCartney for Lennon’s young son, Julian, who was struggling with his father’s fame and the upheaval of his parents’ separation as Lennon left his mother for Yoko Ono. The song was McCartney’s way of encouraging Julian to stay positive amid the confusion and sadness.
Despite McCartney consistently asserting that he wrote the track for Julian, John Lennon later claimed that he believed the song was actually a thinly veiled message to him. In a 1980 interview with David Sheff, Lennon revealed that he always felt the song was directed at him, interpreting it as McCartney’s way of both blessing his relationship with Yoko Ono and expressing disappointment at being replaced as his friend and creative partner.
Regardless of the meaning behind the track, Lennon ensured that one of the song’s most famous lines remained. McCartney has clarified that the line “the movement you need is on your shoulder” is the one that Lennon thought was the “best line” in the entire song, despite hating it himself.
Discussing writing the song, McCartney recalled that he was playing an early version to John and Yoko in his music room while giving notes about what he would take out and keep in. When he got to the line in question, he told them both not to worry about it as he would fix it, but Lennon was having none of it. McCartney told him it “sounds like a parrot or something”, but Lennon, a master of the surreal, instructed: “Don’t touch that; it’s the best line in it!”
McCartney added: “That, you see, was one of the great things about John. I definitely would have ditched that line, but his sense of the ridiculous and the surreal would be like, ‘No, no, no, I know it means,’ he said.”
He left it in, and although the pair’s relationship was about to crash into the rocks, their nature as foils to each other provided The Beatles with one of their most profound moments.
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