McCartney May Have Plagiarized "Yesterday" From Nat King Cole

According to the news article linked below, Paul McCartney may well
have plagiarized his most famous song, "Yesterday," from crooner Nat
King Cole's song "Answer Me".

If this is true, it sheds an entirely new light on Paul's honesty and
integrity, especially considering his ongoing fight to have the
songwriting credits for that song reversed in his favor, and even to
have Lennon's name removed from the credits.

According to the article, Paul's publicity machine has issued the
expected denials that any connection exists between the two songs.

Here's more information on the murky background of how "Yesterday"
came into being, including what may have been another source
plagiarized by McCartney for this song.

Healthy Stealthy...

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sad, if true.

Runnnerr...

My gosh. Imagine, one song influencing another. If true, this must be
the first time that such a thing has happened.

camille...

Yeah, and it took 40 years for someone to make this connection. One of
the most widely played songs and no one noticed it before.

Jeff...

What is sad about it..if Paul didn't know anything about the other
song? And why
would it take all these years for someone to come up with this
theory? A lot of
songwriters accidenly..or on purpose borrow parts of other songs.
Lennon said
that the Beatles borrowed from other artists..just like other
artists borrowed from the
Beatles. He was right.

abe slaney...

The only resemblance I hear at all is in one line of the lyric:

"You were mine, yesterday
I believed that love was here to stay"

Which isn't that remarkable considering the kind of moon in June lyrics
both songs use, and how many words rhyme with "yesterday." The cadence
of the lyric in that one line is *vaguely* similar. If the word
"yesterday" hadn't appeared there, I don't think anybody would have
noticed any other similarity at all, since musically they sound
completely different. I believe some people are on a kind of crusade to
prove that McCartney did plagiarize the song, sub-consciously or
otherwise, since he left himself wide open for that charge. I hardly
think hearing the King Cole song is going to "shed an entirely new light
on Paul's honesty and integrity" for anybody.

fattuchus...

I think you comments are a bit of an exaggeration. The article says
specifically that Paul did not plagerize anything . . . . he MAY merely
have been influenced. Then the article references a few words.

Are the melodies even remotely similar? Is there any proof Paul ever
even heard Nat King Cole's song?

Remember, Paul has claimed consistantly that he woke up one day with
the melody in his head and called the song Scrambled Eggs. Certainly
at that stage it had nothing to do with Nat King Cole's song, unless
one tells me the melodies are very similar.

terra...

Forget it Sal, this is old news and was debunked long ago.

Go find some other conspiracy to hawk.

John Gutglueck...

The BBC story is old (2003) and misleading. Spencer Leigh, who trumped
this whole thing up, is no musicologist. Dominic Pedler *is* a
musicologist and quite knowledgeable about the music of the Beatles.
You'll note, though, that in the article Pedler acknowledges a
similarity only between the lyrics of the two songs. He does not
"echo" Leigh's claim of a *musical* similarity. In fact, on pages 605
of his book, "The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles," Pedler pretty
clearly rejects the notion that there is any striking musical
similarity between the two songs.

Note, too, that the article is misleading in its claim that McCartney
had originally planned to call the song "Scrambled Eggs." Everybody
knows McCartney used "scrambled eggs" as a mere place-holder until he
could come up with proper lyrics--he never intended that as the title
of the finished song. When he eventually did write the lyrics,
McCartney may have been influenced by a couple of lines from Answer Me
(which he'd undoubtedly heard) but not because that song bore any
musical resemblance to the tune he'd dreamed up.