The Paul McCartney song John Lennon said was his favourite

18 June 2026, 08:36 | Updated: 18 June 2026, 08:40

John Lennons' favourite Paul McCartney song for The Beatles may surprise you.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney are perhaps the most famous songwriting partnership in pop music history.

Their bond was so close, that from their earliest days they agreed to credit all their songs jointly, with the bulk of The Beatles' back catalogue being attributed to Lennon/McCartney.

• 'Hey Jude' by The Beatles: The making of Paul McCartney's soaring epic
• The Beatles' massive 'Hey Jude' soundtracks England's bid for glory in new advert
• Listen to the Gold Radio 60s Live Playlist on Global Player, the home of Gold

During and after the band's bad tempered breakup harsh words and diss tracks were exchanged, but as the dust eventually settled they were both more than prepared to compliment each others' work.

And there was one Paul McCartney song in particular that Lennon gave special praise to.

That track was 'Hey Jude', the over seven minute epic recorded partway through the White Album sessions and released as a standalone single in August 1968. – the first song available on Apple Records.

"'Hey Jude' is a damn good set of lyrics and I made no contribution to that," Lennon told David Sheff in the interview later be published as All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

The Beatles - The Beatles - Hey Jude (Official Music Video) [Remastered 2015]

“He said it was written about Julian, my child. He knew I was splitting with [Lennon's first wife] Cyn and leaving Julian.

"He was driving over to say hi to Julian. He'd been like an uncle to him. You know, Paul was always good with kids. And so he came up with 'Hey Jude'."

John continued: "But I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it… Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying, ‘'Hey, Jude – hey, John'.

"I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me. The words 'go out and get her' – subconsciously he was saying, Go ahead, leave me.

Hey Jude (Take 1)

"On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you'. The devil in him didn't like it at all because he didn't want to lose his partner."

As John acknowledged, Paul has always been pretty clear about who 'Hey Jude' was about: John and Cynthia's son Julian.

As Paul tells it, he wrote the song in the car over to Weybridge when he went to visit the pair while John was in the process of hooking up with Yoko Ono.

"I would always turn the radio off and try and make up songs, just in case," McCartney is quoted as saying in Anthology.

"I started singing, 'Hey Jules – don't make it bad, take a sad song, and make it better…'.

"It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian, 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK."

As for the switch from Jules to Jude, it didn't have anything to do with Thomas Hardy, but instead much more popular fare.

"I eventually changed 'Jules' to 'Jude'," McCartney explained. "One of the characters in Oklahoma! is called Jud, and I like the name."

Hey Jude (Take 2 - Remastered)

Despite not writing a single word of the song, Lennon did make a lyrical contribution of sorts.

It was at his insistence that Paul kept in a phrase he really wasn't that keen on at first.

"When I got to the line, ‘The movement you need is on your shoulder', I looked over my shoulder and I said, 'I'll change that, it's a bit crummy. I was just blocking it out,'' McCartney said in Many Years From Now about when he first played the song for John and Yoko.

"John said, ‘You won't, you know. That's the best line in it!' That’s collaboration.

"When someone's that firm about a line that you’re going to junk, and he said, 'No, keep it in'. So of course you love that line twice as much because it’s a little stray, it’s a little mutt that you were about to put down and it was reprieved and so it’s more beautiful than ever. I love those words now."

Sir Paul expanded on the meaning of the song in his 2021 book Paul McCartney: The Lyrics, where he pointed out that by the end of the song it's about a lot more than Julian.

"There's now another character, a woman, in the scene," he said.

"By this stage the song has moved on from being about Julian. It could now be about this new woman's relationship. I like my songs to have an everyman or everywoman element."

Hey Jude

Julian Lennon himself has revealed that he has a bit of a complicated relationship with the song.

It's quite the honour to have one of The Beatles' best songs inspired by you, but of course when it's a nod do your parents splitting up it would provoke mixed emotions.

"That was a point of complete change and complete destruction and complete darkness and sadness," Julian told Club Random in 2023.

"I mean, I was only three, but I recognised something was up. But for mum … it was heartbreaking.

"It's a reminder of that time and that place. I get both sides of it, but a lot of people don't necessarily understand there's a dark, yin and yang, of that song."