Hey Jude: the meaning of The Beatles’ hymn to life

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Hey Jude, take your life in your hands. Seven minutes of a tremendous single, placed by Rolling Stone in 8th place among the Greatest Hits with which the Fab Four seem to tell you this. They tell you to make a masterpiece out of everything, to believe in yourself, to always look forward with courage. And to love yourself.

Attributed to the couple McCartney-Lennon, the track has been written for the son of the latter, while divorcing with his wife. The song however assumes a different form and appears as a real hymn to life. Hey Jude is about always believing in something, starting with ourselves, with the ability to always look forward. Everybody is able, teaches us the British Invasion boys, to make an opportunity out of every day.

Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin

Let her under your skin. Assimilate it. That’s what we should do with our experiences. They must be taken, tattooed, injected in our veins. They have to flow in, to give us the lifeblood needed to know ourselves. Hey Jude teaches you to live and look with fresh happiness our life, full of opportunity.

McCartney begins with his piano and his voice, he’s followed by the bass, the drums that enter and the guitar riff. There comes the second stanza and the drums and the guitar accelerate in a continuous instrumental exchange, almost a game. But the surprise is in the orchestra of 36 elements that offer themselves as instruments. Setting no limits.

Even the body is involved, because Hey Jude is a hymn. And you can see it from the four minutes of choirs,   from McCartney’s swear, that Lennon wanted to include in the final cut. Fucking Hell. At the fourth minute McCartney insistently calls Jude, with those vocal virtuosisms that are almost blues. He’s asking her to realize, how exciting his lesson is, how exciting life is.

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder

Hey Jude is a hymn to life.

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