beatles 披头士

Hey Jude, which turns 50 on 30 August, is the Beatles song most likely to be bellowed by a choir of thousands.

turns 50 到50生日

bellowed 吼叫

choir 合唱团

Any decent song needs to be singable, but Hey Jude goes further: it’s yellable and flexible. Into the gap after “Nahh, na, na, nahh-na-na, nahhh”, you can slot almost any pair of syllables.

yellable 可以欢呼呐喊出来

slot ... into ... 在..中插入

syllable 音节

It is a crowd-pleaser. This month, Hey Jude was the No 1 Beatles song on Apple Music; on Spotify, it was No 4. So, of all the countless classics the Beatles recorded, Hey Jude is one of the four that younger music lovers most want to hear. What is its secret?

crowd-pleaser

countless

Written by McCartney, Hey Jude bears his signature touch: empathy set to elegance . As McCartney melodies go, it’s direct, slamming straight into its title, just like She Loves You. The tune and the germ of the lyrics came to McCartney in 1968, when he was driving from London to Surrey to see Julian Lennon after John had left him for Yoko Ono. Hey Jude began as Hey Jules, an arm round the shoulder of a five-year-old, so the compassion was there all along.

bear 有某种性质

signature touch 体现个体风格

elegance 优雅

melodiy 旋律

slam 撞上...

tune/lyrics 曲调/歌词

germ 萌芽，起源

compassion 同情，怜悯

By then, Lennon and McCartney were writing separately, but still acting as each other’s sounding board. After working on Hey Jude some more, McCartney invited Lennon to his house and played it to him. One line, “The movement you need is on your shoulder”, was there as a placeholder. McCartney thought “it’s a bit crummy”, but Lennon believed “that’s the best line in it”.

sounding board 咨询者

placeholder 占位符

crummy 糟糕

This exchange, recounted by McCartney in 1994, had two consequences, beyond preserving the line. “You love it twice as much, ” he said, it would forever remind him of Lennon: “It’s an emotional point in the song.”

exchange 交流

recounted 讲述