Sir Paul McCartney has said his 1968 Beatles hit “Hey Jude” can bring together warring political factions, using the example of a deeply divided United States.
Appearing on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, the 83-year-old musician said: “Particularly these days, you do something like ‘Hey Jude’ and you see this whole audience singing together.” He added: “In Trump’s America, and the Republicans and Democrats all at each other’s throats — when we do that song, they’re not. They’re all loving it.”
The song, originally released by the Beatles in 1968, remains a staple of McCartney’s solo live shows. In a review of his 2022 concert at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, The Independent described “Hey Jude” as a “unifying singalong.”
During the same interview, McCartney explained why he always declines selfie requests, telling hosts Richard Osman and Marina Hyde that phones have transformed fan interactions. He said he does not want to feel like a “performing monkey” — referencing a man on the beachfront in Saint-Tropez who charges for photographs with a monkey. “I really do not want to feel like that monkey,” he explained.
McCartney’s eighteenth solo studio album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, is scheduled for release on May 29.
