The Beatles Songs Paul McCartney Would Use to Introduce the Band to Aliens

What Beatles song would Paul McCartney play to aliens as their introduction to the Fab Four? This question stemmed from a fan Q&A session held to celebrate Paul McCartney's bestselling book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. Amongst other fascinating queries, luckily selected fans had the chance to ask to the former Beatle; this is the most telling. It also proved a difficult one to answer. THE SONG PAUL MCCARTNEY WOULD PLAY FOR ALIENSMcCartney mused: "It’s always very hard to narrow down favourite songs, so what I do is just make a guess. What comes to my head for The Beatles would be "Yesterday" – I’d say that was an important moment. But then again, my inner voice says, 'What about 'Hey Jude?' What about 'Let It Be…?’ So, it is a very difficult question to answer. But I’ll plump for 'Yesterday'.""Yesterday" is a song that famously came to Paul in a dream. He woke up with the melody in his head, and improvised placeholder lyrics to help fix the tune in his mind. McCartney had been living with then-girlfriend Jane Asher at the time, in Wimpole Street, London, in 1964. Until it was properly fleshed out, the song's initial, make-do title was actually 'scrambled eggs', with the opening lines: "Scrambled eggs, Oh my baby how I love your legs, Not as much as I love scrambled eggs." Paul was so taken with the tune that, for a month or so, he became convinced that it must be a pre-existing work. After asking around, he knew it was an original. It has since gone on to become one of the most popular compositions of all time, with Guinness World Records noting that, by 2006, more than 1,600 versions had been recorded.The other two contenders picked out by McCartney are also worthy considerations. HONORABLE MENTIONS"Hey Jude" was released in 1968 and became a top-selling single around the world. McCartney penned the song for John Lennon's young son, Julian, after Lennon had left his wife, Cynthia, for Yoko Ono. Writing in The Lyrics, McCartney recalled: "I was thinking about how tough it would be for Jules, as I called him, to have his dad leave him, to have his parents go through a divorce. It started out as a song of encouragement." Paul's other potential pick, "Let It Be," appeared on the band's final album, of the same name. A beautiful ballad with a rousing chorus, it was written as an ode to Paul's mother, Mary. As a single, the song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100.Read More: