Hey Jude is one of the most popular songs that The Beatles released
The song Hey Jude by the iconic bad The Beatles was initially written as “Hey Jules” and was intended to comfort Julian, the son of John Lennon who was 5 years old back then.
Paul McCartney wrote the song for Julian because his parents were getting divorced. Based on the article in Songfacts, this became “Jude” because of the character “Jud” in the musical Oklahoma! It was in 1987 when Julian learned the song was created for him. He and Paul happened to be in the same hotel at that time. Julian admitted to Paul that growing up, he felt that he was closer to him than his own father.
The inner circle of the band was shifting when Paul McCartney wrote this song. At that time, John Lennon left his wife Cynthia for his relationship with Yoko Ono while McCartney had broken off his engagement with his longtime girlfriend Jane Asher.
McCartney had his reflection as he drove to the Lennon home in Surrey. He was thinking about Julian and what could be the effect of his parents’ separation on him. Thinking about how he could encourage the young Julian, he wrote the line, “Don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.”
This song is the longest single of the iconic band with 7:11 minutes. It is considered as the longest song ever released as a single and became the first long song to get a lot of airplay. The chorus is repeated 19 times and the “na na na” fadeout occupies four minutes of the song.
Radio stations prefer to play short songs so they can play more songs but this is not the case in Hey Jude. It was found by the radio stations that people remained listening until the end of the Beatles song even though it was much longer than the usual songs. This long song paved the way for other long songs like American Pie and Layla.
The Beatles shot an uplifting music video for this song on September 4, 1968. They shot it at Twickenham Studios and it was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
Another 60s hit song that people enjoyed listening to was Sweet Caroline.