Paul McCartney and "Yesterday"
"I woke up with a lovely tune in my head," Paul McCartney recalled to his biographer, Barry Miles. "I thought, 'That's great. I wonder what that is?'" He got up that morning in May 1965, went to the piano, and began playing the melody that would become "Yesterday." At first, lacking lyrics, he improvised with " Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs." While he really liked the tune, he had some reservations: "Because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it." Today, with more than 1,600 covers, the song holds the Guinness world record for most recorded versions.
This story appears in the May 15, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.