Paul McCartney’s dad, on hearing the Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’: ‘Couldn’t you sing ‘yes, yes, yes?”

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Paul McCartney’s father was an accomplished musician, so you can imagine the trepidation the youngster must have felt in unveiling the early Beatles hit “She Loves You” for him.

Would Pop criticize the melody? The lyrics? Nope. Instead, James McCartney took his son to task for the slang included in its chorus: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

History tells us that McCartney and his school chum John Lennon stood their ground, and the song would help break the band in the U.S. It is also the Beatles’ best-selling single in their home country of Britain.

But, first, there was an audition in front of dear old dad.

“When John and I had just finished writing the song ‘She Loves You,’ we were in the parlor of the little house we lived in in Liverpool,” McCartney told NPR, “and John and I went next door to one of the rooms where my dad was. And we played it — ‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah’ — and he said, ‘Oh, that’s very good, son. But there’s just one thing. Couldn’t you sing, “She loves you, yes, yes, yes?”‘ He said, ‘There’s enough of these Americanisms around.’ We said, ‘No, sorry Dad,’ it’s got to be ‘yeah, yeah, yeah.'”

Rolling Stone would rank “She Loves You” as the 64th greatest song of all time in 2004.

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