Paul McCartney says the melody of Yesterday came to him in a dream

pop & funWikipedia1965 · London, England

Paul McCartney says the melody of Yesterday came to him in a dream

the gist

According to Beatles biographers, Paul McCartney woke in Jane Asher's family home on Wimpole Street with the entire melody of Yesterday in his head, and he rushed to a piano so he would not lose it. Worried he had unconsciously copied someone else, he spent about a month asking people in the music business whether they recognised it. The song's first working lyrics were placeholders, "Scrambled Eggs", and John Lennon suggested the final title. McCartney finished the lyrics in May 1965 during a trip to Portugal, and the song was recorded by the Beatles and released in the summer of 1965.

so what

Yesterday became one of the most covered songs in history, and its origin shows how songwriting often relies on half-finished ideas that take years to complete. The worry about plagiarism was also real: musicologists later found loose similarities with songs by Ray Charles and others, though McCartney's publicists denied them. It is a rare, clear look at how a famous song was made.

fun fact

Chris Farlowe was offered the song as a demo before the Beatles recorded it, and he turned it down because he thought it was too soft.

Hampi was once one of the world's largest cities, until its Vijayanagara capital was destroyed in 1565

the gist

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.

how it works

The city was built around a fortified core with temples, markets and water structures along the river, supplied by an extensive network of roads and waterworks. When the empire fell, the city was not rebuilt, so its stone monuments were left standing.

so what

Hampi shows how quickly a great city can vanish after a military defeat, and how a ruined capital can remain sacred. Its ruins give historians a view of medieval South Asia that few other sites can match.

fun fact

The name Hampi comes from Pampa, an old name for the Tungabhadra River.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0

Image: Wikimedia Commons

source: Wikipedia ↗

2 min

politicsshortCNA2:01

False allegations about Singapore’s hand in Indonesia’s markets and a made-up meeting

from CNA

CNA Verify has found close to 400 posts pushing falsehoods tying Singapore to Indonesia’s stock market rout and to a secret meeting that never took place. Together, they drew nearly 12 million views, and some were circulated by accounts that appeared to be working in concert, across multiple social media platforms.

Here’s how the disinformation campaign targeting Singapore was uncovered.

on YouTube: CNA ↗