Let It Be (song)

• 1. The Last Single

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  "Let It Be" entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 6 in the spring of 1970. At the time, no song had ever debuted that high on the chart. Within weeks, it climbed to number one and held that spot for two weeks in April. Yet the timing gave the achievement a painful edge. It was the Beatles' final single, released before McCartney publicly announced he was leaving the group. A song built around acceptance had become, almost without intending to, the last statement the Beatles made as a singles act. Where did the phrase "let it be" actually come from? And how did a song that divided critics from its first day outlast the band that created it?

• 2. Mother Mary, Brother Malcolm

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  Mary Patricia McCartney died of cancer in 1956, when her son Paul was fourteen years old. More than a decade later, she returned to him in a dream during what he described as a stressful period. She told him: "It will be all right, just let it be." He recalled the experience simply: "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream." That dream became his most often cited explanation for how the song came to be written.

  Mal Evans, the Beatles' road manager, offered a different account in a 1975 interview with David Frost. Evans claimed that McCartney had a vision of Evans himself during the group's meditation sessions in India in March 1968. In Evans' telling, he appeared to McCartney saying "let it be, let it be," and that was the phrase's origin. He also described a specific night when he drove McCartney home from a late recording session. It was three in the morning, raining, and dark in London. McCartney told him that night he had already written a song and planned to call it "Brother Malcolm," a reference to Evans. He later decided to change the title, worrying it might give "the wrong idea."

  On the 19th of September 1968, McCartney first played around with the song in the recording studio. He was working between takes of "Piggies" during sessions for The Beatles (The White Album). In that early rehearsal, he sang "Brother Malcolm" where "Mother Mary" would eventually appear, partially supporting Evans' account. A third possible source surfaced much later, in the podcast McCartney: A Life in Lyrics. There, McCartney recalled a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet. In Act 5, Scene 2, Hamlet comforts his friend with dying words: "But let it be. Horatio, I am dead." McCartney had memorized Shakespeare passages in school. He wondered whether the phrase had risen from his subconscious decades later, arriving as his late mother's voice in a dream.

  Listeners would come to read the song as an allusion to the Virgin Mary, in particular the Annunciation. McCartney consistently replied to those interpretations by saying that listeners could take from the song whatever they needed.

• 3. Recording the Master Take

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  The proper rehearsals for "Let It Be" began at Twickenham Film Studios on the 3rd of January 1969. The day before, the group had started filming what would become the Let It Be documentary. Early sessions at Twickenham used only mono decks for syncing to film cameras, not for multi-track release. One take from this period featured McCartney alone on piano and vocals. The first attempt involving all four Beatles came on the 8th of January, and work on the song continued through the rest of the month.

  Multi-track recording commenced on the 23rd of January 1969 at Apple Studios. The master take was captured on the 31st of January as part of the "Apple studio performance." McCartney played a Blüthner piano. Lennon played six-string electric bass, though his part was later replaced by McCartney's own bass at the request of George Martin. Harrison and Starr took their standard roles on guitar and drums. Billy Preston played Hammond organ. Two suitable performances were recorded that day; the first, designated take 27-A, became the foundation for all officially released versions. Take 27-B appeared in the Let It Be film alongside "Two of Us" and "The Long and Winding Road."

  On the 30th of April 1969, Harrison recorded an overdubbed guitar solo on the best take from the 31st of January. He recorded a second overdub on the 4th of January 1970. The first was used for the original single; the second for the original album. Some listeners concluded from the sonic differences that the two versions had different underlying tracks, but both draw from take 27-A.

  McCartney sent a demo of the song to producer Jerry Wexler in late 1969. Wexler passed it to Aretha Franklin, whose recording was released in January 1970. That made Franklin's version the first official release of "Let It Be," reaching stores before the Beatles' own single.

• 4. Martin, Spector, and After

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  The single version was produced by George Martin and released on the 6th of March 1970. It was backed by "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)." Martin mixed the orchestration quietly in this version, producing the softer texture most listeners encounter first. Backing vocals were recorded on the 4th of January 1970, under the supervision of Martin and McCartney. That session included the only known contribution by Linda McCartney to any Beatles recording. Original pressings of the single listed a running time of 4:01, taken in error from the album version; the single's actual running time is 3:52.

  Phil Spector remixed the song for the Let It Be album on the 26th of March 1970. His version retained Harrison's second guitar solo, reduced the backing vocals, applied a tape-delay effect to Starr's hi-hat, and mixed the orchestration prominently. The studio take and the film version also differed slightly in one verse: the studio version ends it with "there will be an answer," while the film version uses "there will be no sorrow" in the same spot. At the beginning of the album track, Lennon is heard mimicking Gracie Fields in a falsetto voice. He introduces the preceding track "Dig It" with the words: "That was 'Can You Dig It' by Georgie Wood, and now we'd like to do 'Hark, the Angels Come.'"

  Ringo Starr had reservations about what Spector had done with the drums. Spector had applied a delay effect to Starr's hi-hat and added shakers during the second verse. When Let It Be... Naked arrived in 2003, Starr's original drumming was restored. The tom-tom overdub rolls that appeared after the guitar solo in the third verse were removed as well. Starr later joked that after Naked came out, he would have to endure McCartney saying, "I told you so."

  A previously unreleased take, identified as take 1, appeared on Anthology 3 in 1996. It was recorded on the 25th of January 1969, before McCartney had completed the final verse. The track also captured studio banter from the 31st of January sessions. After one take, Lennon is heard saying: "I think that was rather grand. I'd take one home with me." A Melodiya pressing in 1972, catalog number M62-36715/6, was the Beatles' first official release in the Soviet Union. The three-track EP paired "Let It Be" with "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine." Glyn Johns prepared two mixes of the song for the Get Back album. The first was completed on the 28th of May 1969; the second on the 5th of January 1970. Neither was officially released at the time. Both eventually appeared on the 2021 Super Deluxe edition of Let It Be.

• 5. A Divided Reception

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  Derek Johnson's review in the NME found the song's "pseudo-religious" qualities compelling and praised McCartney's performance. His one reservation was that the melody did not match the standard of some earlier Beatles singles. His bottom line, however, remained admiring: "a record to stop you dead in your tracks and compel you to listen attentively." John Gabree of High Fidelity magazine took a different position. He found the lyrics "dangerous politically" but still called the song possibly "the best thing musically that McCartney has done."

  Richard Williams, reviewing for Melody Maker, wrote that McCartney's compositions "seem to be getting looser and less concise." Even granting the album version its harder guitar solo, Williams concluded the song "still doesn't have enough substance to become a McCartney standard." Former Creem critic Richard Riegel placed it on his 1996 list of the ten most overrated Beatles tracks. He compared it unfavorably to Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water," arguing that the two songs "catered to the lowest-common-denominator emotional stasis of its listeners." In a 1980 Playboy interview, John Lennon disavowed any creative involvement in the song. His words were direct: "That's Paul. What can you say? Nothing to do with the Beatles. It could've been Wings. I don't know what he's thinking when he writes 'Let It Be'." Ian MacDonald described the song as having "achieved a popularity well out of proportion to its artistic weight." He compared it to "Hey Jude," calling the track like that song "without the musical and emotional release."

  Rolling Stone placed "Let It Be" at number 8 on its list of the greatest Beatles songs. The same magazine ranked it at number 20 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The Grammy organization inducted the song into its Hall of Fame in 2004. Mojo magazine placed it at number 50 on its 2006 list of the 101 Greatest Beatles Songs. In The 100 Best Beatles Songs by Stephen J. Spignesi and Michael Lewis, the song ranked third overall. It sat behind "A Day in the Life" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" but topped the book's separate fan poll. AllMusic critic Richie Unterberger described it as one of "the Beatles' most popular and finest ballads."

  Jacob Uitti, writing for American Songwriter, read the song as McCartney's farewell to the group. He described the lyrics as carrying McCartney's mixed feelings: grief over the breakup, and a quietly stated hope that the members might find their way back to each other. The second stanza, in his reading, leaves that door open: "there will be an answer, let it be." The contemplated reunion never came before Lennon died in 1980.

• 6. Stages and Stadiums

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  On the 13th of July 1985, McCartney performed "Let It Be" as one of the closing acts of Live Aid. The estimated global television audience exceeded one billion people. His microphone failed for the first two minutes. The performance was inaudible to those in the stadium and barely audible to viewers at home. David Bowie, Bob Geldof, Alison Moyet, and Pete Townshend, who had already performed earlier that day, returned to the stage to back him up. McCartney afterward joked about changing the lyrics to "There will be some feedback, let it be." He re-recorded his own vocals for home video releases.

  In 1998, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr sang "Let It Be" at a memorial service for Linda McCartney. The service was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, with a congregation of around 700 people. McCartney organized a very different occasion on the 20th of October 2001. The Concert for New York City, staged at Madison Square Garden, was a benefit in response to the attacks of the 11th of September. "Let It Be" closed the evening.

  In 2003, McCartney performed a private rendition for Russian president Vladimir Putin inside the Kremlin, before his public concert in Moscow's Red Square. On the 18th of July 2008, he performed "Let It Be" with Billy Joel at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. The concert was the venue's last before its demolition. McCartney performed the song at the Concert for the Queen on the 4th of June 2012, an event celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. On the 25th of June 2022, he headlined the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury. The crowd of more than 100,000 was described as possibly the largest the stage had ever seen. On the 11th of April 2024, McCartney performed "Let It Be" at the Hollywood Bowl. He was backed by The Eagles, performing the song as a tribute to Jimmy Buffett.

• 7. Covered Over Decades

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  In 1987, the song was taken up by Ferry Aid, a charity ensemble formed to raise money for victims of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster. McCartney was among the participants, alongside Boy George, Mark Knopfler, and Kate Bush. McCartney's contribution drew on audio from the original Beatles sessions. He filmed a separate segment of himself singing along to the track for the music video. The single reached number one on the UK singles chart and held that position for three weeks. It was certified gold for shipping more than 500,000 copies and also topped the charts in Norway and Switzerland.

  On the 18th of August 2023, Dolly Parton released her cover of the song from her album Rockstar. McCartney and Ringo Starr were among the credited performers, alongside Peter Frampton and Mick Fleetwood. The recording marked the first time two former Beatles appeared as separate credited artists on the same charting song.

  On the 10th of May 2024, the band's official YouTube channel published a new music video for "Let It Be." It drew on footage from the 1970 film Let It Be. More than fifty years after the Apple Studios sessions, the footage of McCartney at the Blüthner piano was still drawing new viewers.