Where did Paul McCartney get the tune for “Yesterday”? “The origins of ‘Yesterday’, which has been recorded by more than 2,000 artists and played on the radio more than six million times, has always been a mystery – not least to McCartney himself. He woke up in his flat in London in May 1965 with the song in his head. He realized that he might have borrowed the arrangement from another song and asked friends if they could suggest any similar tunes. They convinced him it was his and that it had come to him in a dream. Now musicologists have identified echoes of Answer Me, the 1953 U.K. hit for both Frankie Laine and David Whitfield, which was later covered by Cole.”