(1) …one of my ongoing annoyances in life is people thinking they can rewrite Paul's lyrics to make them more "logical."
(2) I've always taken the radical position that Paul knew exactly what he was doing.
(3) Great art is rarely neat or logical.
(4) In the case of "Yesterday came suddenly," he's expanding the song's timeline to look beyond the immediate disappointment he's experiencing now.

(1) I’m not trying to rewrite the song. I’m showing strong internal evidence that an error has crept in, and that Paul’s original intention was “yes, today came suddenly”.
(2) Like any human, Paul can make mistakes, and many of his mistakes are on record.
(3) (“Great”?) art may not always have to be neat and logical, but sometimes (whether “rarely” or not) it must be logical in order to achieve the artist’s intention.
(4) The song’s timeline is a period of less than 48 hours. “Suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be” is in the present tense – being uttered “today”. So “yesterday came suddenly” cannot be made to fit using any fanciful rationalization.

@njr OK -- he wrote that. I guess I will have to shut up on this, except to continue to point out that it doesn't fit.

If he had simply written "yes, today came suddenly" instead of "yesterday came suddenly," then it would fit like a glove and be even more genius.

In fact it's what I thought I heard when I first heard the song. I only recently realized that it isn't what he sings or is printed.

@njr Please read my post titled 'Yesterday' - the correct lyrics? It's in the YESTERDAY forum.

@njr Please show me where he "wrote" that in his handwriting.

@toris It's Paul who is clever, and that's why I'm convinced that he originally wrote "yes, today came suddenly". He wouldn't make the error of WANTING to say that "yesterday came suddenly" -- because it doesn't fit.

BTW, I definitely hear "Black Minin' Hills".

@toris Yes, he sings it that way in every performance I've seen or listened to. But what I'm saying is that he had already fallen into an unconscious habit of singing “yesterday” instead of “yes, today…” because it’s repeated so often in the song.
Then the music publishers rendered the words as heard in the recording.

It's not unusual for performers to unconsciously change the words of songs they have been singing, even if they wrote them. In fact, it's more likely when they wrote them, because they often go through several alternate versions before they perform them, and they still can morph.

Hello all -

Of course, I'm a huge fan of Paul from the beginning (I'm 77), but I've never before engaged in fandom of any kind. I've joined this Forum as a way of trying to make known, or at least to discuss, what I think is something important to Paul, to every one of his fans, and to music history of the future. Please read my post titled 'Yesterday' - the correct lyrics?

Would you agree that the lyrics of his most important and popular song should be correctly sung and printed? If yes, then it follows that somebody needs to ask Paul to verify this while he still can do so.

Otherwise, we may be forever doing his work a disservice. And future music lovers, students, and critics will debate forever what is correct.

I’m convinced that a few words in “Yesterday” have been rendered incorrectly by Paul himself and by all those who copy him and write out the lyrics.
In brief: The theme of the song is simply that, for the narrator, yesterday he was happy and today he is sad.
Therefore, the last line of the second verse should be “Oh, yes, today came suddenly”, NOT “Oh, yesterday came suddenly”.
Here’s a detailed analysis of the lyrics as sung and published:
1 Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
2 Now it looks as though they're here to stay
3 Oh, I believe in yesterday
4 Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
5 There's a shadow hanging over me
6 Oh, yesterday came suddenly
7 Why she had to go
8 I don't know, she wouldn't say
9 I said something wrong
10 Now I long for yesterday
11 Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
12 Now I need a place to hide away
13 Oh, I believe in yesterday
The general theme of this song is how one’s life can unexpectedly change drastically from one day to the next.
Line 6 is inconsistent because:
Lines 1, 3, 10, 11, 13 express a longing for yesterday, when his relationship was intact.
Therefore, Lines 7, 8, 9 must have occurred today, not yesterday.
Lines 2, 4, 5, 12 express his sadness (now = today) at the change in the relationship that occurred since yesterday.
So it is today that came suddenly, not yesterday.
The following simple change to Line 6 makes it consistent with the time frame of all the other statements, without changing the sound of the words much:
6 Oh yes, today came suddenly
I strongly believe that this is the way that McCartney conceived it originally, but that by the time he recorded it, he had fallen into an unconscious habit of singing “yesterday” instead of “yes, today…” because it’s repeated so often in the song.
Then the music publishers rendered the words as heard in the recording.
I’m hoping that Paul may get wind of this idea and let the world know if it’s correct, while he is still able to do so.